Dell's auto backlight dimmer software?

Hi, so I got my 1520 about a year ago now, formatted and put XP on almost immediately, but eventually went back to vista. Anyway, my friend also got a 1520 a few months after me, but he never formatted so has his original vista load. Anyway, I noticed that when he went idle for a few seconds his back light dimmed. Mine doesn't do this, and I've looked around in power/mobility center and haven't found anything. And yes, I've installed the dell software. Any ideas? I'd really like for mine to do this.

 

Same BIOS version?

 

its a vista power management feature called SmartDimmer..
to activate it. go to ur "power options".. chose "change power settings" for the profile you want to change then chose "change advanced power settings". scroll down to "display", there is "allow smartdimmer..." to chose the number of minutes you want to wait before it kicks in. and "have smartdimmer......" that specifies the percentage of dimming...

 

its not there in my settings

 

Check your version of Quickset against your friend's version... If his is different than yours, try that version.

 

are you by any chance running vista basic

 

Ah, I thought it'd send me an email when someone replied, lol. Thanks a lot madoon, I looked there but I would never have looked under the display section, so thank you, I found it.

 

I don't have this SmartDimmer option (using Vista Home Premium).

 

not sure.. but i think the only version of vista that should not have this is basic. so it should be there i home premium.. look where i said in my previous post..

 

I dont have it in business edition.

 

im sure you do check again..

 

Actually, I do still have a problem...it seems that whatever setting I use, doesn't really do anything. For instance, one of the settings is to "Allow SmartDimmer to reduce my brightness after: On battery: 100%." What does that even mean? That it'll reduce it when the battery is at 100%? They couldn't' just put after "X amount of minutes?" Am I missing something here?

 

Ok. there are 3 options.

"Allow SmartDimmer to reduce my brightness after"
this specifies the time of inactivity (idle) after which the feature is activated and display is dimmed (0=off/never)

"Have SmartDimmer reduce my brightness by"
Specifies the amount (precentage) of which to dim the display.
for example if this is set to 50%. and your LCD brightness is 80% when the feature is activated, it will dim your display by 50% down to 40%.

"SmartDimmer Full screen video mode"
ill be honest and say i dont understand what this does.

 

I guess it doesn't dim whilst in full screen video?

 

I have Vista Ultimate, and I don't see the feature that you are talking about. Please look at my screen shot.

 

That's the screen I got too.

 

Hey, merlin_72032, you might want to install Dell's quickset stuff and some newer video drivers, the way I understand it is that this comes with the nvidia drivers.

ALSO: I don't understand why it's a % sign for the "Dim after" setting? Should I just ignore it? It doesn't do anything if I let it go idle for a while.

 

Oh, that explains it... Mine doesn't have the dedicated graphics.

 

I did have Dell Quickset software installed. I also have the latest driver from idia too. My driver version is 175.97. I don't see auto dimmer thing on Nvidia control panel.

The dim % thing is the way you control LCd brightness from OS instad of bios.