All batteries will fail at some point, when they have been is use for longer periods of time. What frustrates people the most is premature battery failure.

Most think that turning your devices off will extend battery life, but the opposite happens. Devices consume more power when they are starting up, so turning them off is not such a good idea if they are going to be switched on frequently.

Cars and Various Automobiles

It is important to protect the car battery from heat under the hood temperatures with the use of a case or a heat shield. It would extend the life of the battery by keeping it charged at all time. During the hotter month check frequently the electrolyte levels of your battery. A recent study revealed a way to increase the battery life by about eight month would be to locate it outside of the engine compartment. Car manufacturers are relocating the starting battery to the passenger compartment or the trunk to avoid under the hood temperatures. It also helps to use wet batteries vented to the outside or cells that do not produce gas when recharged. Individuals have different driving patterns, this could reduce battery capacity and this would lead to sulfation and lead sulfate gets accumulated. You can use an external for charging.

The temperature is the most important factor to consider in any battery. A batteries life could be extended greatly by not being exposed to heat. It is common sense that high temperatures lead to faster chemical reactions. They need to be watered more often with only deionized or demineralized water. In an emergency rain water could be used as a good substitute. Reducing the number of charge & discharge cycles would significantly improve the life of the battery, in addition to temperature. In extremely cold climates, the car battery needs to be continuously kept fully charged when not in use.

Portable Electronic Devices

You can also increase the battery life for your laptops, cell phones, iPods and more. By lowering the brightness when not necessary. In a dark room for example, it's not necessary to have the brightness set at 100%. Without exerting any strain on your eyes you can lower the brightness. The amount of time the backlight stays on can also be decreased. For example with iPods the backlight doesn't need to be on for 10 seconds when 2 seconds is just fine. Laptops can be set in hibernate mode when not in use.

Turning down your volume increases battery life which many people are not aware of and this is very important. With the use of headphones you could have the volume at 50%.

Background applications are power hungry monsters. Stop everything that is not being used. Defragmenting the hard drive once in a while helps decrease file scatter on the hard drive and uses up less power. Send the computer into standby mode after a certain period of inactivity as it conserves battery. Although, standby resume also uses some power but not as much as starting up. Interestingly, leaving a CD or DVD in the drive can decrease battery life, as it hogs power whenever the drive spins up.

In Wi-Fi Applications

You can increase battery capacity or reduce Wi-Fi product power consumption through control methods, which will prolong battery life in Wi-Fi apps. You can increase your battery capacity, but due to technological limits, it could increase the cost or size of your battery. By shortening the time of an active cycle or extending the stand by time would reduce power consumption will help the life span of your battery. By leaving the WiFi on, on your iPod when not in use uses a large amount of battery life so turn it off when not in use.