My laptop comes with me everywhere I go. I wake up in the morning, toss my laptop in my bag and head out. Often I don’t get back home for another 5-6 hours. This means I need my battery to last me all day. I do take the charger with, but I often never have time to stop and plug in. Here are five simple tips I follow to make sure my battery lasts me all day.

1. WiFi – Don’t get me wrong, I love being connected but it’s not necessary 100% of the time. I like to blog on the go, but when I write I make sure to switch the WiFi off until I am ready to publish my post.
2. Screen Brightness – I will admit that a nice bright screen is very fancy, but at times, its just not all that practical. You can skip this if you have the automatically adjust screen brightness checked in system preferences. If you don’t have that checked, you can easily forget that you have your screen blasting as bright as it will go.
3. Keyboard Brightness – Handy as it may be, it’s just another drain on your battery. Keep it off unless you need it.
4. Bluetooth -  I use the Bluetooth feature on my Macbook Pro at least every other day, mostly to transfer stuff to and from my phone. Occasionally it gets left on, this can really kill the battery. It never hurts to check, make sure your Bluetooth is off.
5. Optical Drive – Hopefully you all know what a drain your optical drive can be. If it does not have to be in, take it out. all those times when you accidentally bring up spotlight can add up and take a toll on the battery.

So there ya go, simple and efficient. Do you have some battery saving tips? Feel free to leave them in the comment section below. -btw the reference to spot light is referring to the fact that it has to spin up the disc to index it.