How in the Tech

Squeeze Out Extra Juice with Vista Battery Saver

By Adam Myers ⋅ April 2, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Vista

It’s pretty well accepted by computer users that every new iteration of an operating system brings about higher hardware requirements. New features and functionality are not free, especially when it comes to computer resources. This situation was no different when Microsoft released Vista as the replacement to XP. Hardware advances quite rapidly while battery technology, at least in the consumer space, has crawled to a general standstill. Laptop users who upgraded their XP systems to Vista were hit with a decrease in battery life, even though it was the same hardware that ran XP happily.

There is no dispute that a Vista install on a laptop uses more juice than XP. Most users then suspect that all the visual effects and eye candy available in Vista are the culprit to the decreased battery performance. With that being said, what options do you have? Short of down-grading to XP, the best option is to just turn off all the visual flair and reclaim some of those CPU cycles. Unfortunately, Vista doesn’t exactly provide that type of flexibility – in that either all the visual effects are off or on. Ideally, you’d probably be fine with the effects when running on AC power and then fallback to a degraded visual experience when operating off the battery.

Vista Battery Saver is a free software program designed to handle just this situation. The application provides the ability to turn off the Windows Aero interface or Sidebar depending on whether you are plugged in or not. Further, the options can remain enabled until the battery hits a certain drain level. While it doesn’t seem like much of a big deal, often times just an extra 15 minutes makes all the difference.