Flooding from Hurricane #Sandy at Battery Park twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/sta…

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 30, 2012

Hurricane Sandy left millions of Americans without power last night, including nearly 750,000 New Yorkers. The New York City mayor’s office estimated that 6,100 residents are staying in emergency shelters.

Until the power comes back on, we’ve collected some advice for maximizing the battery life on your laptop, smartphone or tablet.

When your battery is low, avoid multitasking with different applications. “Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery.”

Turn down the brightness on your screen: “Automatic brightness controls that adapt to light can help, and you may want to check sound and vibration notifications and adjust those too.”

Perform only necessary functions on your device. “Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD.”

On a tablet or smartphone, turn off any apps running in the background. “there are apps running in the background of your phone that you think you closed or reappear each time you reboot your device”