How portable is your ultra-portable? Laptops today are getting more and more powerful and smaller by the day, but it almost seems that the developers of portable computers have slightly overlooked another important factor in portable computers; its battery life.

The average laptop model today at most can last up to 2.5 hours of normal use on one full charge. You will have to find a power socket nearby if you plan to use it any longer than that.

Today, there are only a handful of laptops out there in the market that can withstand more than 5 hours of regular use on a single charge. The word ‘portability’ with regards to laptops seems to be limited to the fact that you can bring your computer everywhere, but not use it anywhere. Most laptop manufacturers claim that the laptop has 4 – 5 hours of battery life, but that is only true if you leave the laptop idle.

Fortunately, there are certain laptop models that you can get your hands on if you dream of using your laptop on battery for extended periods of time. At the time of writing, one of the most impressive battery spans can be found on the Apple MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz (2008 edition). On regular use, the battery lasted to an astounding 4.5 hours! Other laptop models with good battery life spans include the Acer Aspire 8920G, the Asus Eee series, the Fujitsu LifeBook series and the Toshiba Satellite Series.

If you are looking to get more hours of battery life, consider getting an extended battery pack for your laptops. These extended batteries are basically larger batteries for your laptop that provides an average of extra 2 hours of use on your laptop. If that is still not enough, you can consider getting an external laptop battery. These are basically huge external batteries (sometimes as big as the laptop itself), that when plugged in can provide up to an extra 9 hours of use. The downside of external laptop batteries is that they are quite bulky and heavy (up to 1.5 kg)

Regardless of the model of laptop and the type of batteries that you use, there are several basic tricks that you can use to extend your laptop’s battery life. One of the easiest ways is to make use of the your computer’s power settings. This option can usually be found when you click on the battery icon on your tool bar. When on battery, make sure that the option is set to a ‘power saver’ mode. In this option, there will be a slight compromise in your laptop’s performance for a longer battery life.

Another easy way to extend your battery’s life is to dim the display screen. Lower the brightness of your laptop’s display to the minimum and you will notice a considerable increase in your battery’s life.

Generally it is not good to keep your fully charged battery plugged in when the power point is plugged in. The constant ‘over-charging’ will decrease the performance of the battery over time. Also, try to only charge the battery when it is fully drained.