Both Gizmodo and Engadget got it right in their read of a Reuters story from earlier this morning about the impact a March 3 fire at LG Chem is having on the global supply of Li-ion cells used in laptop battery packs. It's affecting the industry supply of lithium ion batteries that manufacturers use in laptops and other devices. Currently, we have increased the price of aftermarket or replacement batteries. Unfortunately, constrained supply can mean higher prices, and we're doing what we can to manage that. 

While this is an industry issue, we are working with other global network of suppliers to mitigate the impact this has on our customers.

This seemed like a good time to share some tips on how to save laptop battery life, so I went to our product teams to get their thoughts:

• Disable wireless when you don't need it. Many of our current laptops like the newer Inspiron, XPS and Latitude machines have hardware switches to make this easy
• Turn down your screen brightness. In most cases on our notebooks, you can do this by hitting Fn + the down arrow
• Set your notebook to hibernate mode when not in use.
• You can control these things and more with Dell's QuickSet utility. Check out more details here.

For more details, take a look at this StudioDell video where Tony Salinas, a systems engineer from our product group talks about these tips and more.