How can I improve the battery life on my device?

How do I improve tx 1000 tablet pc battery life.?

• the exact model it tx1417cl but I named it tx 1000 because its the same series and so others can also benefit from this. Well the battery life is horrid it came with a 6-cell and it runs a percent a minute so 100 minutes no matter if im playing dvd or just letting it sit on the desktop with nothing (other than background) running I have many programs but i have read reviews that this battery should get 3.5 hours i doubt my background stuff is draining that much and even in power save mode 100 minutes +- 5 minutes. ten points to whoever can get me the best battey life results. also i dual boot xp pro and vista so tips on either are welcome

• Answer:

  How old is your battery? Battery performance degrades quite quickly on machines used a lot. You can lose up to 1/2 of the performance in as little as one year. First thing to extend life is to draw as little power as possible. Only run the applications that you need to, shutdown ones not needed to reduce processor usage. Turn down your screen brightness a bit and that will save some power. Google these 2 free apps and try one or the other out: Desktop Sidebar or Sysmetrix. Among other things these apps can monitor your processor and HDD. You can use them to see if any apps or processes are using too much processor power or running the drive a lot. Then you can find ways to minimize their usage. I've used these to tweak my TPC to run at 1% to 3% usage at idle.