A friend has recently given me a android tablet that they are having trouble with and asked me if I can get it to run better for them. It is a Archos Platinum 97 HD and their two main gripes are a very short battery life and sluggish general performance for the tablet's specification.

So I am mainly looking for suggestions of ways to mainly maximise the battery life of the tablet and possibly also general optimisation to help with performance.

I do see a number of apps that promise to help with battery life and performance and more general task killer type apps in the play store, but I am wary of them as you can find a lot of rubbish on there too, and they might well end up making the tablet perform a good deal worse. However would consider this if someone had a specific app that worked well for them?

Also are there any tips and tricks I can try from within the Android operating system that might help with this?

Any advice appreciated.

Without looking up what version of Android is came with, my guess would be that has had a version upgrade which made performance worse.

If true, you could root it and put a cut down OS on. Have a look at XDA Developers.