utility to increase battery life in Vista

hey guys,

i made my own post a little earlier saying that I was disappointed with battery life, and i've been looking around, and I came across a program that supposedly helps increase battery life.

it's called " Vista Battery Saver," and it basically disables the Windows Aero Interface and the Sidebar program when you are running from the battery.

nothing crazy that you can't do manually, but it'll be nice to not have to think about it. don't expect it triple your battery life or anything, but i have noticed an improvement. maybe like 20%

i've also done some research and found that Vista's Superfetch feature drains the battery a bit, so you might want to consider disabling that too to squeeze every minute out of your battery.

 

The title is now fixed.

Have you tried Notebook Hardware Control? That helps me conserve battery life by undervolting.
Tim

 

hmm... i actually never have. although i am fairly computer savvy, i like things (at least on my windows installs on my notebook) to be fairly clean and "stock," so i was wary of undervolting, or doing things that were a little bit more complex.

but checking out that program, it looks pretty simple. i'll give it a look. thanks

 

I've found battery life to be exactly the same as Xp with Vista if you properly configure the advanced power options in IBM's own power manager.

 

vista battery saver has only increased my notebook time on battery ~5 mins...nothing noticeable...your best way to conserve energy is to dim down the notebook as much as possible

 

is it just me or does anyone else find the sidebar to be useless?

 

maybe you are not running the right gadgets

In contrast to your post, I find my sidebar EXTREMELY helpful...you just have to find the right gadgets....i use the weather one...bandwidth gadget...dictionary, and a batter one indicating how much time i have left

 

noxxle, what have you modified in your thinkpad power manager? i have tweaked every setting that I can find in there. here are my following settings (i've italicized the ones that I don't really quite understand, so possibly there's more to tweak there?):

System Settings
Maximum CPU Speed: Lowest
Optimize Fan Control To: Balance All Parameters
Display Brightness: Level 0 of 7

Lower Display Brightness: Never (it's already at level 0)
Turn Off Display: 1 Minute (which is already pretty low)
Stop Hard Disk Rotation: 3 Minutes
Enter System Standby: 15 Minutes
Entery System Hibernation: 20 Minutes

Advanced Settings 1
Sleep (Allow Hybrid Sleep): Off
Wireless Adapter Settings (Power Saving Mode): Maximum Power Saving
PCI Express (link State Power Management): Maximum Power Savings
Multimedia Settings (When Sharing Media): Allow the Computer to Enter Away Mode
Display (Adaptive Display): On
Search and Indexing (Power Savings Mode): Power Saver
USB Settings (USB Selective Suspend Setting): Enabled

 

I believe the easiest and most effective way to increase battery life is by using XP instead of Vista.

 

Tim, i've been using notebook hardware control, and it's been pretty helpful. I don't have too much experience with it yet, but i have 88% left, and i'm using wireless (obviously), and it shows 2:30 left. if that holds up, that will be quite a significant improvement.

eyecon, panteedropper: in my experience (Even before using that battery saver utility), i noticed that for some reason the windows sidebar drains a noticeable amount (maybe about 20-30 minutes, my total battery life being about between 2 and 3 hours). in my personal experience, i don't think the aero interface is that taxing (maybe it's because i don't use it that much).

i also have not found the sidebar to be too effective. i know it comes down to which utilities you use, but the microsoft sidebar library is disappointing. maybe konfabulator (now yahoo! widgets) spoiled me, but i feel like new widgets rarely get added, and none have really wowed me.

i am also not a big fan of tiling the widgets on the side. i like the mac expose (and konfabulator) concept of having a widget screen (toggled by f8 or what not). i know you can kinda mimic that with the sidebar (i think with start key + spacebar), but i don't rely on widgets enough to figure it out.

 

Not true. If you properly configure the advanced power options in IBM's own power manager you can get as much battery life as XP easily.

 

noxxle... can you respond to my previous post in this thread?

i was showing you my settings in IBM's own power manager, and I was wondering what more I could tweak to get the same battery life in vista that I got in XP.

 

You can completely turn off the Indexing service. Search this forum for Vista tweaks. There is a huge thread about it. All the tweaks are listed on the first page.

 

I'm talking out of the box configurations. You're basically crippling Vista to enhance battery life imo. All things being equal, Aero will eat up more juice than XP.

 

OH yea, forgot to mention i have aero turned off too.

*edit*
Yes, i do agree with you. Turning off all of these features 'cripples' Vista in a sense. I also turned off the system restore feature. Not sure if that one affects battery life or not.