Extending Notebook Battery Life

Keep Your Battery Going with PowerPlus

PowerPlus is a technology offered on Samsung notebooks designed to let you discharge and recharge your laptop battery up to 1,000 times. That’s better than three times the longevity of a standard laptop battery, which typically wears out after 300 cycles and three years of daily use.

Most battery damage occurs when the cells inside are at or near capacity. That’s because batteries get a bit hot under the collar when they max out their charge at 100 percent. This heat causes the delicate structures within to start to break down, which ultimately makes the battery less capable of holding a charge. Eventually capacity drops to the point where the battery won’t hold a charge at all and it has to be replaced.

PowerPlus works to avoid this problem by keeping your battery properly conditioned, thanks to a set of technologies that helps prevent this kind of damage to the delicate electronics inside.

Battery Life Extender

One of the key features of PowerPlus is a simple setting you’ll find on your Samsung laptop called Battery Life Extender. You’ll find Battery Life Extender under the Samsung folder, inside “All Programs” in your Start menu. Here you’ll find the option to either leave your battery in Normal mode (which lets the battery charge to 100 percent of its capacity) or engage the Battery Life Extender mode, which caps the charge at 80 percent.

Battery Life Extender helps keep the battery from overcharging and overheating, which protects it from being damaged. The result is a battery that keeps on going for years. And of course, it’s an option you can turn off or on at any time. If you find you need a little extra juice for a long flight, the setting can always be returned to Normal mode, giving you full access to 100 percent of the battery’s capacity.

The Green Connection

Keeping your battery in good condition doesn’t just save you money, it also helps the environment, as fewer batteries end up in landfills—and fewer batteries have to be created to replace them.

PowerPlus is a good first step in an energy efficient computing strategy, but you can do even more. You can prolong your battery life, and reduce the number of recharges it requires, by taking a few simple steps to prepare your laptop to minimize its power consumption. For example:

• Change your laptop’s “power plan” (in the bottom right corner) to the “Energy Saver” profile when it’s unplugged
• Dim your screen to the lowest comfortable brightness setting
• Shut down unused applications and processes by quitting programs when you don’t need them
• Turn off Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi when not in use
• Unplug unused peripherals: USB connections almost always draw power