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You should shut down anything that you are not using. Do you use a bluetooth keyboard or mouse? If not than turn off bluetooth. Whenever you aren't using Wi-Fi turn it off as well. Turn the screen brightness down as low as you find readable. Modern laptop CPUs can throttle their speed due to load to save power; any programs you leave running in the background use CPU cycles and keep it running. Multitasking is great but it is one of the enemies of battery life. Whenever possible hibernate instead of putting your laptop in standby. Standby saves power by dimming the screen and slowing the CPU to a crawl but hibernate saves the state of your programs and powers down. Laptops don't use any power while hibernated (other than dark current but you know what I mean) and are available in moments when you need it again.
Nickle Cadmium batteries certainly do exhibit the memory effect but modern versions of these batteries greatly reduced this. Lithium Ion batteries, on the other hand, do not. There is no need to "exercise" Li-Ion batteries on a regular basis like NiCad. Li-Ion last longest when they aren't fully discharged on a regular basis (exactly the opposite of NiCad). It is a good idea to occasionally fully discharge a Li-Ion battery (about once a month). This isn't for the sake of the battery but for the sake of the battery meter. You see, modern electronics calculate the amount of charge remaining based on how the battery currently performs so fully discharging the battery calibrates your battery meter to make it more accurate.
I think that especially when the battery is new, it's best to let it run down as low as possible (almost dead) before pluggging it in. Nickel cadmium, lithium and other types of rechargeable batteries can get what's called a memory when they are over charged and / or put on charge "too early'. This practice eventually leads to the "memory" of the battery being used up and / or shortened causing a full charge to no longer last nearly as long as it should. I use this practice with my cordless power tools, as well as my laptop and have never had to replace batteries.
That goes with any electronic, be it a laptop, cellphone, Ipod, whatever, same principle applies. You should also try to 'kill it' (meaning let the battery run completely out and then recharge it completely before using it again) every couple months, it will help prevent the battery's charge time from decreasing. Because over time the batter will be like, 'well she only uses me until i'm at 23% and then plugs me in, so thats all I need to stay charged for!' and then 46 becomes the new 23 and it just goes down hill from there.
I know that with a mac, the first time you turn it on you should leave it (don't use it) and let the battery drain until completely empty/dead (which will take like 4 days), before you actually use it. Somehow this increases the battery life in the long run. My uncle is really computer savvy and told me this when I got my macbook like 4 years ago.
turn the brightness to zero turn the screen time to a few seconds so it will turn off when your not using it and if you have this option on your computer put power saver on it will boost you life but slow performance if you don't want that click recommenced setting if you have it to make your performance and life even
