Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re constantly looking for the  nearest power outlet to charge up. How do you keep your battery going for as  long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so.
1. Defrag regularly  - The faster your hard drive does its work – less demand you are going to put on  the hard drive and your battery. Make your hard drive as efficient as possible  by defragging it regularly. (but not while it’s on battery of course!) Mac OSX  is better built to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for  Apple systems.
2. Dim your screen – Most laptops come with the ability to  dim your laptop screen. Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling  performance. Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out  some extra battery juice.
3. Cut down on programs running in the  background. Itunes, Desktop Search, etc. All these add to the CPU load and cut  down battery life. Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on  battery.
4. Cut down external devices – USB devices (including your  mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when  not in use. It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod)  with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the  charge on your laptop battery.
5. Add more RAM - This will allow you to  process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual  memory. Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power  efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most  applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually  require heavy usage of virtual memory.
6. Run off a hard drive  rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives  are worse. Even having one in the drive can be power consuming. They spin,  taking power, even when they?re not actively being used. Wherever possible, try  to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol 120% rather than optical  ones.
7. Keep the battery contacts clean: Clean your battery’s metal  contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol.  This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.
8.  Take care of your battery – Exercise the Battery. Do not leave a charged battery  dormant for long periods of time. Once charged, you should at least use the  battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery  completely discharge. (Discharing is only for older batteries with memory  effects) 
9. Hibernate not standby – Although placing a laptop in standby  mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it  doesn’t save anywhere as much power as the hibernate function does. Hibernating  a PC will actually save your PC’s state as it is, and completely shut itself  down.
10. Keep operating temperature down - Your laptop operates  more efficiently when it’s cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or  keyboard cleaner, or refer to some extra tips by LapTopMag.com.
11. Set  up and optimize your power options – Go to ‘Power Options’ in your windows  control panel and set it up so that power usage is optimized (Select the ‘max  battery’ for maximum effect).
12. Don’t multitask – Do one thing at a  time when you’re on battery. Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your  email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3′s,  set your mind to one thing only. If you don’t you’ll only drain out your  batteries before anything gets completed!
13. Go easy on the PC demands –  The more you demand from your PC. Passive activities like email and word  processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD. If you’ve got a  single battery charge – pick your priorities wisely.
14. Get yourself a  more efficient laptop - Laptops are getting more and more efficient in nature to  the point where some manufacturers are talking about all day long batteries.  Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an aging one is usually a  quick fix.
15. Prevent the Memory Effect - If you’re using a very old  laptop, you’ll want to prevent the ‘memory effect’ – Keep the battery healthy by  fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three  weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have)  which do not suffer from the memory effect.
Bonus Tip #1: Turn off the  autosave function. MS-Word’s and Excel’s autosave functions are great but  because they keep saving regular intervals, they work your hard driver harder  than it may have to. If you plan to do this, you may want to turn it back on as  the battery runs low. While it saves battery life in the beginning, you will  want to make sure your work is saved when your battery dies.
Bonus Tip  #2: Lower the graphics use. You can do this by changing the screen resolution  and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much  or more power today as hard disks – Thanks Andrew 
Update 7/7/07: Bonus  Tip #1 to give caution about turning off autosave, tip #8 to change information  about discharging batteries – thanks to all who pointed it out. Added Bonus tip  #2, Tip #1 to add in clause in regards to Mac OSX, Tip #1 about the spinning of  hard drives – thanks to all who pointed it out