Laptop batteries don’t last forever. In fact, they’re often among the first laptop components to wear out and ultimately fail. Here’s a few tips for expert laptop battery care, so that you don’t have to spend the money on a replacement.

• If your laptop is plugged in to an outlet all the time, remove the battery

Your battery is in a constant state of recharge when plugged in to AC power all the time, which can reduce its effective life, because it raises the overall temperature of your PC, and because your battery only has a certain number of charge cycles in its lifetime. If you’re using your laptop as a desktop, the battery isn’t necessary. Just watch the AC adapter and make sure it doesn’t fall out sans battery, or you’ll lose your data.

• Watch your battery’s temperature

Just like your desktop, your battery doesn’t like extreme heat or extreme cold. When storing the battery for transport, be sure its not exposed to high or low temperatures. And don’t leave it sitting out in a hot vehicle.

• Don’t let the battery die regularly

Modern lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries can actually become damaged if you let them run to 0% and charge up to 100% frequently. To gain the maximum number of cycles throughout the battery’s life, try not to let it fall below 10% very often.

However, it is important to occasionally let the battery run down and recharge, in order for Windows to gauge the battery life correctly. This is called calibrating. If you notice your battery never charges to 100%, then calibrating is probably necessary.

• Use a power plan

When away from an outlet, use a power-saving plan such as Power Saver, which will perform steps to keep your battery from dying too soon. A constant, heavy load on your battery (such as all your wireless antennas turned on at once) will shorten its life.

• Try Battery Optimizer

And finally, we recommend our own Battery Optimizer for giving you more time between charges, by optimizing several battery-draining components of your laptop or netbook PC. Give it a try!