battery optimization in Win XP (m1330 but not only)

Hi there,

I've been lurking the notebookreview forum for quite a while and there have been some really helpful tips over the years. I've recently bought a m1330 laptop from Dell and as battery life is the single most important issue for me, I spend quite some time on optimizing power consumption. I think that some of the things I tried out might be of interest to other people, so here we go.

First, this is the configuration I bought, obviously with max battery life already in mind - I don't game on my laptop and do mostly bureaucratic / internet / Web development stuff. Voilà:

X3100 integrated graphics
C2D T8100 (penryn 2,1Mhz, 3MB L2)
LED Screen
2GB Ram
120GB HDD (WD1200BEVS)
Dell 355 Bluetooth module
Intel 3945ABG WiFi
6Cell Battery (57Wh)

I get about 4h-4h30 of "wireless productivity" (email, internet, aptana) and 5h+ of "working on a train without wireless" out of the system with the 6 cell. I'll probably get a 9 cell somewhere in the future, which should add another 50% to these numbers. Compared to what other people report on in the forums, this is quite good, I think, so here is what I did:

Generally:
When optimizing for battery life, one of the things to do is unplugging the battery and connecting the power block to a watt meter that will measure the laptop's energy consumption. Even if the cheaper ones are not very accurate, you'll see whether what you are doing actually has an effect.
Battery life optimization is cumulative. There is no secret trick that will double your battery life and software that promises to do just that is just deceptive. But there is a series of little things you can do that will have, taken together, a substantial effect on how long your machine will run.

1) disable rarely used hardware in BIOS
I use Bluetooth and the DVD-Rom really rarely and especially the Bluetooth module will constantly suckle a little juice. Disabling it manually with the switch or the driver is a hassle and if you use it three times a year like me, BIOS is the best way. If you don't use firewire and the card reader, you can also disable them in the BIOS, unfortunately not separately. You'll probably not want to disable the USB ports though ,-)

2) use XP instead of Vista
First of all, comparing Vista and XP needs quite a lot of time because the runtime estimates are very unreliable and you have to test in practical use. I stripped Vista down to the bare minimum (Windows classic interface, etc.) and still, there is about a 1W difference in power consumption that I could not get rid of. The m1330 works perfectly with XP, you'll just have to install the XP hotfix that will enable the deeper sleep power state if you have a penryn. XP runs really fast with new hardware and your processor will rarely go beyond the lowest P-State. I'd love to go Ubuntu but for battery life that's just not possible for the moment.

3) Disable Services
If you don't mind the grey Win95 look (I don't), get rid of the themes service. If you don't use the search feature very often, disable indexing. If you are not installing stuff all the time, disable system restore.

4) Disable Hardware in Device Manager
Depending on your usage you can disable additional hardware in the device manager. In my case, I disabled the fingerprint reader (I would have preferred to have a laptop without one but couldn't), Firewire, Ethernet (can be enabled very quickly in the network connections) and the Webcam. These things can be turned on quickly and you can simply create two hardware profiles.

5) use RMClock to go lower
XP will keep you're Penryn running at 800Mhz at the lowest. With version 2.35 of RMClock, you can go down to 600Mhz which does make a real difference considering that when you've stripped down your OS and do only light work, the CPU is idling most of the time. On battery, I undervolt as much as I can and block the 10x and 11x multipliers. Modern processors are way to fast for Office work anyways. You will not notice any difference.

6) the obvious stuff
There are of course the basic tips like dimming the screen (don't hurt you're eyes you've only got the one pair!) and sending screen and drives to sleep quickly still apply.

Doing all of this will get you very close to the magic 10W mark and I've you drop to standby every now and then, the 9 cell should get you through an entire work day without power cord.

I'm sorry if most of the stuff here is general knowledge anyways, but I thought that some power stingy people like me might appreciate the info.

cheers,
B.

 

With the XPS M1330 i used to own i was able to get over 4 hours wifi web browsing with lowered brightness to about 3/8 and i had the T7500, 8400GS and the LED screen with Vista with a 6 cell battery.

Some people also reduce the colour output from 32bit to 16bit.

Also turning of Aero and using Windows classic theme in Vista and removing unecessary processes may help as well.

 

Welcome to the forums.

5hrs+ on a 6cell, thats pretty damn impressive. I will have to try some of these things when I get the time.

 

Where can I download this?

 

Hi,
you have written about turning off webcam, dvd etc. to save energy, but it treated Win xp. How does this stuff look like in vista? I have read that vista is better in energy management, so isn't it so that it turns off all unused things such as webcam or usb ports? I just ask because I don't want to do additional work if it's already done by vista.

with regads integrator

 

Yah I want to know where to get this and where to get RMClock(could prob. find w/ a quick search) I have a dual booted 1720 (XP Pro/Vista Primo) Just got my intel ABGN Card to work in XP after 5hrs of frustration (YAY! ) both OS's now work perfect (Though haven't tested Blue-Ray in XP). I can watch a Full DVD W/ screen max brightness on my 1720 w/ the 85Whr Bat. (Last night watched "Clear and Present Danger", 30% life remaining after credits )

 

Hmm, one would have to compare in detail. When I say "wireless productivity" I do mean pretty heavy office use though. When I just write email like right now, I get over 5h on WiFi on 6/8 (I never go lower, eyesight rules) The 8400GS will always add at least 1-1.5W to the power envelope...

You have to request the patch from Microsoft here.

Rmclock is here.

Vista does indeed have more advanced power management but in practice, the additional processes eat up the gains, even when Aero and Sidebar are disabled. Concerning the unused hardware, I don't really know - I know the Vista internals a lot less well than XP. If you have a watt meter you can test it just by disabling stuff and looking what happens...

 

One question: Why do talk about wattmeter to measure wattage drain, when there is e.g. Notebook Hardware Control, which is free and gives you actual wattage up to 3 decimal places?

 

Software like NHC gives you a rough estimate of power use but despite the three decimals, this is very inaccurate...

 

With a clean XP install on my D630 I was able to get ~4:30 hrs with WiFi at ~12-13W power consumption. Measured with Notebook BatteryInfo and 6 cell battery.

 

Has anyone proved that Windows Vista is better at consuming less power than Windows XP?

 

I wouldn't say it consumes less, but with the M1330 in my signature, I get 3.5 to 4 hours of wireless productivity, with the display at 5/8 brightness under Vista SP1.