Disabling Devices to extend battery life

I read the new(er) notebookreview review of the 2008 Macbook, and was unimpressed by the battery life of the Macbook using Vista. I'm basically trying out tweaks to extend the battery life of my laptop, and I'm at the point where I'm turning off devices in the Device Manager.

More info here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=237531

Now, I know that most of the power is consumed by the CPU, HDD and the screen, but humour me for a bit here. Can the following devices be safely turned off? This assumes that the user (me) will only use the laptop for internet surfing and Microsoft Office when these devices are turned off...all in one shortcut.

Human Interface Devices
HID-Compliant Consumer Control Device
HID-Compliant Device
HID-Compliant Device
HID-Compliant Device
ITEICR Infrared Receiver*
Microsoft eHome Infrared Receiver*

* Interestingly, there is no option to disable these devices in device manager. Haven't tried with Devcon yet, but I assume it can be done.

IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers
RICOH OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

System Devices
ACPI Thermal Zone*
Consumer IR Devices*

USB Controllers...do I disable all of them?
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2830
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2831
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2832
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2834
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2835
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 2836
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 283A


I've already disabled some other things, like the SD/xD card reader, ethernet adapter, webcam and the optical drive, but was bored and wondering what these devices are and if I can do without them. Thanks.

 

Disabling things other than wireless devices (Wi-fi, Bluetooth etc.) will have very small effect on the battery, things like USB hub for example will not draw power unless you use a USB device, it may need a small amount of current to keep the controller alive, but that in comparison is almost negligible (maybe a minute or two worth of battery life)

HID Devices usually refers to your input devices : keyboard, mouse, touchpad etc.. I wouldn’t mess around with those if I were you.

Running your computer in powersaver mode, removing unnecessary background applications, minimizing hard disk activity by disabling indexing, dimming the LCD brightness and reducing the clock speed of your GPU (if possible) will have more impact on the battery life than turning off some idling hardware devices.

 

You are more likely to increase boot time by disabling drivers, not saving more battery. With that said, I too have disabled drivers I don't use.

 

DO NOT MESS WITH THOSE DEVICES!

Some of those are actually virtual devices that take care of handling calls/commands from real devices.

Disabling devices does not prevent the device from receiving power. The device will still startup, but the OS will ignore it and will not load the driver for it. Essentially, it is still working, but cannot make any calls to the OS.

 

I disable some devices for stability reasons, not power reasons. A buggy driver can cause a system crash in some cases. (Drivers can also have performance implications, I believe, although it's probably quite a small impact in most cases.) The devices I disable are modem, 1394/firewire, smart card reader, and PCMCIA card reader.

If that reduces power consumption too, great... but I was never really sure whether it uses more or less power than having the driver enabled so it can use power management features. I doubt if it makes much difference though.

 

Turn Aero off.

 

Thanks guys. Yeah, I know, turn Aero and Sidebar off to extend battery life, and this can be done with Vista battery saver...

 

With all due respect, you'd probably get better use out of your time figuring out how to redirect the ambient light in any space so that it passes through the lcd screen and allows you to turn the backlight itself off permanently.

 

Hi-larious. All I need is a Green Lantern power ring and I'm seeeeeeet. Toys R' Us maybe?

 

Fair enough, I was a little harsher than I should have been (it's been a bad morning, sorry you got the spill-over); however, the thought wasn't pure blow-off - since the backlight is one of the big power-eaters on a notebook, it might be worthwhile trying to utilize ambient light (for example, in an office, or during the day time) to illuminate the lcd instead of just relying on the backlight.