Screen dimming on battery

I was wondering how I could disable or at least improve upon the screen's image when it's running off of the battery. Adjusting the brightness doesn't actually help; the screen stays dark, and the brighter I make it the harder it is to read anything. I read in another thread it has something to do with the bios, but thus far I haven't found a way around it.

 

1.start your laptop pressing like crazy F12. a menu should apear, eventually. 2.chose the bottom option - enter the bios.
3.here, on the left menu you should go to display settings(browse the menu, you'll get it)
4.this has 2 options: the way the display acts on AC power and on battery. there are different steps in brightness. chose a higher value for 'running on battery option'.

if you have dell quickset application installed(its on the cd u received, also) just press the Fn key + Up key. if you have problems reading the text, you should try using the 'cleartype tuning' from microsoft. google it, install it, run it from control panel and set it up. the improvement is obviesw

 

Keep in mind that the screen uses a lot of power on battery, so keep it as dim as is comfortable using th Fn + up/dn keys as noted.