How can I properly conserve battery life?

Like the username implies just bought a new laptop from Dell, and in this first hour of use I decided to browse the site since I have some questions as a laptop newbie. First, I heard from a friend that as soon as you buy a laptop you are supossed to use it in battery power only until it runs out and then recharge it, but I haven't done that yet he mentioned that in this way when the battery power recharges it will last more from now on, after this first drain of total power from the battery, is this true? sorry totally clueless, what are actually the best ways to extend the use on battery power?
Second, I stumbled upon this site on the web and I was wondering if anyone has had some experience using it http://www.pbus-167.com/nhc/nhc.htm any feedback either positive or negative on the link is appreciated it, thx.

 

NHC is a great program--I ran it on both my Dells. I wouldn't worry too much about the battery. Use and enjoy your notebook, life is too short to stress over batteries.

NHC will let you control many aspects of the system, including battery consumption. Dell's Quickset utility also has a power management feature.

www.batteryuniversity.com is a good resource if you're curious about the technology involved.

 

Turn down the brightness of the display and wifi.

 

I would say screen brightness is probably the single biggest factor.

Figure out which brightness levels you are most comfortable with and settle to use them when you need to stay unplugged. Its tempting to always keep it at 100% bright but it takes its toll and you will find that keeping your brightness at about half way or slightly more than halfway up can be quite fulfilling and even easier on the eyes.

Next, if you want to go totally all out I would recommend disabling the on-board NIC if you are on wireless and disabling any internal things like bluetooth and such. Lastly, replace your hard drive with something that's 4200 RPM instead of 5400 RPM. You will take a performance hit at that point, but if all you're doing is surfing the net you might not care and the lower RPMs will save you some battery life.

Basically playing with battery life is a trade off game. Only you can answer the question of what you are willing to sacrifice in order to extend your battery life. If speed, brightness, and certain components are things you can live without you can have a pretty significant boost in battery life.

 

Another tip- use hibernation whenever possible. Booting up from power-off can eat a lot of battery power- as much as 10-15% at a time if you have a bloated install of XP (as if there were another kind) that takes a lot of time to boot.

Of course some laptops (and macs are just as bad, thank you) have issues coming out of hibernation, which negates the benefit, but you don't have much to lose.

 

Thanks for the tips, by the way, I'm curious about the comment that I heard from a friend on having to run the laptop on battery power as soon as it arrives, until it runs out of energy to later recharge it and have it last for much more time the next time it's on battery power, is this true?

 

Battery life = how much usage on your laptop components.
Set LCD brightness to low, avoid using DVD/CD, avoid heavy HDD activity, turn off sounds, turn off wireless.
If your notebook comes with dedicated GPU, turn on its power-saving features, and also set WinXP's power profile to "Max Battery".

And 3rd party apps like NHC does help too.

 

From the batteryuniverse.com link vespoli posted. I've heard a lot of different things about initial conditioning of batteries, but this site looks like it knows what it's talking about.

If you decide to use NHC definitely use the dynamic switching option and also set each cpu multiplier's voltage down from the default.

 

The above post basically covers your question, but you do not need to fully drain your battery before charging it. Li-Ion batteries do not have the "memory-effect" that older rechargeable batteries suffered from. In fact, it's better to recharge it before it is fully discharged.

So in a word, no. What your friend has told you is not true.

 

Lower down the display settings

 

I see, thanks for the comment Atticus