Vista drain a battery! and Vista Battery Saver is very useful
Yesterday, I posted a beta version of Vista Battery Saver. It made a lot of wind over the statement, that Vista Aero Interface together with Windows Sidebar drain your laptop battery.
The same day at night, Nick White from development team wrote, that he has a hesitation about this statement in Windows Vista Blog. Even Jeff Atwood called me to stop voodooing… But now I have evidence, that approve my doubts. Here is comes.
Dell Latitude D820 with Windows Vista Ultimate on it works one hour more on battery without Aero and Sidebar running
If you do not believe me, here my proves.
Here the comparison of 20 minutes of working (regular everyday working) in my computer with and without Vista Battery Saver. It 5% difference of final charge rate. We can solve simple equation to understand, that if my battery loss 16% with Aero and 11% without in 20 minutes, it’ll be completely empty within about 2 hours with and within about 3 hours without those fun features. So I was completely right, writing this simple yet useful program.
I realize, that it’s possible that the part of sidebar is much more, then the part of aero, but it still makes a lot of sense to use such savers.
For those, who really interested with calculations, raw excel file is attached.
UPD 18-May-07: Following James comment, I’ve check the influence of hardware disabling on battery power. Results speaks for itself. Take a look.
I disabled everything I can – WiFi, DVD, wire and wireless modem, soundcard, BlueTooth, SmartCard reader and Audiocard and run the same test
Here comes the king results
For those, who need explanations – that exactly the same results as it was with Aero On. So, what’s the conclusion? You tell me 
Attachment updated as well with new results
May 15th, 2007 · Comments (15)
15 Responses to “Vista drain a battery! and Vista Battery Saver is very useful”
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January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
Does anyone know of a similar program that works in Windows XP? The feature I particularly want to have is to be able to control when a laptop with both AC and battery should charge the battery. My situation is, even with AC plugged in and a fully charged battery inside, the battery will somehow show to be 99% left. Then the battery begins to charge… I do not want the charging taking place all the time; so what I want is a software with which I can tell only below what % charge left should I let the AC charge the battery.
Thanks!!
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
Pingback from RISPARMIARE LA BATTERIA DEL 70% | ASPX | idee e soluzioni per il software
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
Pingback from Vista Battery Saver « TTC Shelbyville – Technical Blog
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
How do you get the program?
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
I will indeed try for at lest once..Vista consumes a lot of energy man!!
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
good method,Here is another tip for you. Just keep your laptop turned off, and your laptop battery will stay fresh.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
good
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
good article，How about not keeping your laptop battery plugged in all the time. Take it out when you are using the power cord.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
thanks,Other small improvements in battery life may be gained by the ability to turn off USB ports individually to save power.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
Thank you for this outstanding article.I thought Centrino was the best technology for laptop battery performance.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
Pingback from Ask The Admin » Blog Archive » Vista Battery Saver
January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
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January 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
This program should be useful for desktop computers as well.
Disabling the the power hungry features should reduce my electric utility bill.
Thankyou for helping me save money…. and making my pc more green.
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
please respond to email for i am very computer stupid. this is my first laptop it has vista premium I bought a magazine to help me with some questions but am still confused. I will put this program on my laptop as was advised in mag. but could you explain to me is it better to leave your laptop on or turn it off or what to save the battery life itself. do you leave it plugged in or use it unplugged? Like I said I am really ignorent as how to make the most of this laptop. please help
January 14th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Wow, found your blog on digg.Happy I finally tried it out. Not sure if its my Firefox browser,but sometimes when I visit your site, the fonts are really tiny? However, love your blog and will check back.Bye