Why does my laptop battery go down when I’m not using it? [ASK MR. NOOBIE]

Ask Mr. NoobieQUESTION: Can you tell me why the battery on the brand new laptop I bought for my husband still goes down even when he is not using it? – Ruth W. from Indianapolis

ANSWER: I have a pretty good guess as to why this is happening. You are probably just closing the lid on the laptop instead of actually powering off the laptop.

While it appears the laptop powers off when you shut the lid it is actually going into a sleep mode. While in sleep mode, your laptop remembers its current state so when you open the lid again you can quickly resume from where you last left off.

Sleep mode requires very little power but it does still draw power. So if your husband is going for days between uses on the laptop he will definitely notice a drain on the power when he resumes use of his laptop. And if the battery is already low when he closes the lid, there’s a good chance it will completely lose power before the next time he uses it.

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