To save a bit on battery life on the road, turn down the brightness on your monitor by just a hair -- or perhaps as low as you can stand. That definitely saves the juice.

• Buttons near the laptop's LCD monitor control the brightness.
• Sometimes, the brightness is controlled by using special Fn key combinations.
• Your laptop's power manager might automatically dim the screen when the laptop is on battery power.
• Screen dimming can be done in Windows Vista, in the Control Panel's Mobility Center.
• Also check the Power Options dialog box (from the Control Panel), to see whether your laptop has any advanced or specific settings for disabling or saving power used by the display.