Turn off vista aero while on battery

How do I set my laptop so it automatically turns off aero while I am on battery? I read that it should do it by it self when I set it to power saver mode, but it doesnt do it.

The only way I made this work is to set the screen to 16bit in the vaio power manager.

 

Try setting your card to balanced performance while running on the battery. This may not get rid of the Aero interface however it will make sure your gpu doesn't excessively drain your battery life.

 

what? I dont undertand? I am running the intel gma 950 right now...

 

In your sig it said go 7400, I thought you were referring to that. It's possible that Aero isn't putting a strain on your gpu seeing as it's all shared memory if your talking about the GMA 950 integrated graphics controller.

 

I don't think Aero can be completely turned off by default if you are on battery. It takes quite a while for Windows to turn on/off Aero (if you have noticed). It's not as easy as having the brightness reduced when running a battery profile. I would imagine that someone will find a way of doing this via a third-party app, or at least the next version of Windows will have this feature (maybe?).

 

my laptop is a hybrid, I am refering to the laptop in the sig. Anyway, I have it set to 16bit on battery in the vaio power manager, and it turns of aero, and it takes like 1s, so I dont see why it could not just turn it off without switching to 16bit....

 

What I'm saying is why turn Aero off?

I seriously doubt you would save any battery life by doing so.

 

I guess in a way, you are right
but why should I run aero on battery? I mainly type, or watch movies, both of these activities are fullscreen, so there is pretty much no difference. It will probobly only give like extra 5-15mins of battery, but why not?

 

I just don't think it's worth the hassle, I run Aero on battery with my go 7400 and before I ran the Experience Index Test to run/enable Aero I still got the same amount of battery life without it. Turning down your screen brightness will impact the battery much more than adjusting your Aero settings.

Anyways if your deadset about it, I'm not sure myself of an alternate way, but I wish you luck in your quest to do so

 

so, actually u r saying that u do not need aero at ANY times (battery or ac) per se, with ur current activites - well, turn it off then, always run vista in classic/basic mode

i sincerely doubt that u get any "extra" battery life/time out by turning off aero (tested on my oldie, with different scenarios, and the difference in battery time is almost nil);

aero is just not for look, it is also taking advantage of whatever ur gpu can give and make the system running more "efficiently"

cheers ...

 

On my toshiba there are three power settings. On Balanced Aero works and on power saver mode aero doesnt work but i think it only gives 10 mins extra.

 

for your first question, why not run i on AC, since I am not loosing anything, its prettier when I am multitasking.

So your saying there is no loss of battery when I am runing aero?

 

Oh, it costs battery life. There have been tests for this. Any bit of graphical eye candy requires the graphics card to work harder and expend more energy. Can't get something for nothing.

Read what I said in response to Airman above.

 

yea, thats exactly what I thought, it will save like 10mins of battery life. But nobody still answered my question, hod do I make it so that it automatically turns of aero while on battery?

 

I believe what everyone is saying is you can't. But I really don't know.
Maybe Madonion can help you out. But they have a Toshiba,you have a Hybrid whatever.

 

I have a SONY SZ 460

 

I would like to know if anyone has figured out a way to switch back to basic when on battery and back to aero when plugged in automatically on a notebook? Thanks

 

Yes, try this:
VistaBatterySaver

Gary

 

just discovered a program that will automatically disable aero on battery

its called Aerofoil
dl it here: http://silentsoftware.co.uk/

 

does anyone have any pro's and con's of vista battery saver versus aerofoil? I was reading pc mag..and they just reviewed aerofoil

 

I see that some programs for the OP's solution have been provided, but otherwise you could just open the task manager, and end the task " dwm.exe "....it will temporarily disable AERO, then re-enable it.....ending the same task a second time completely disables it, until you decide to re-enable it.