Saku [07.28.07 10:30 AM]

Thanx for this tip man. Few weeks ago i bought a new laptop with vista and the battery is really a pain in the a**.

  shawnpetriw [07.28.07 11:14 AM]

Save your sanity and get a Mac.

  Manuel [07.30.07 03:25 AM]

That is good to know, my battery is almost gone and holds only 30 minutes when it is fully recharged.

  Tim O'Reilly [07.30.07 09:01 AM]

Manuel --

Try putting your battery in the freezer for three or four hours. I've found that doing that will often "reset" the battery so it will hold a much bigger charge.

  Manuel [07.30.07 03:46 PM]

@Tim
Thanks, will try that right away!

  aaron tersteeg [08.01.07 12:08 AM]

It is great to see that people are working on providing solutions for better power management.
As Jon points out, more people need to integrate this into the software that they write. Wouldn't it be great if our browser would adjust the video frame rates down to save juice if we are running on battery.

  Kevin [08.02.07 02:31 AM]

Anecdotally this has been reported on many times, although it appears to be a very difficult thing to test and measure.

If you are suffering then also look at turning off indexing as well as Aero. Some other discussions here. (Declared interest in that site!)

  Chris Wong [12.27.07 08:10 PM]

thanks a lot for the tips brady. By the way Tim, what is the logic behind putting the battery into the fridge ?

  Eddie Moses [12.29.07 12:31 AM]

I am not sure if Vista really does that. I bought Vista and I consider it the worst purchase ive done in my life.

  Adi [12.29.07 08:03 AM]

Thanks for trick. I recently bough both Vista and Mac os tiger and i am working on both of them to decode my ultimate OS..

Thanks!

  AVM [01.08.08 04:43 AM]

It's really great Vista battery monster :(.

  Tech [01.08.08 05:03 AM]

Thanks for advice also Tim's freezer experience very interesting.

  Ajeet Khurana [01.08.08 11:48 AM]

Yet another piece of software that should have come bundled with the mothership (Vista). But I find myself saying stuff like this with all Microsoft releases. And I am not even a Microsft-hater!

  Riky [01.11.08 05:32 AM]

Thanks for the tips, till now I am running XP pro in my laptop, but very soon I will upgrade both.

  Meteko [01.11.08 06:42 PM]

I have bought a new laptop and it runs on vista. The battery did not last me an hour, even though it was suppose to run for 2 hours or more. I did not know there is this function because i was too busy with my project, thanks for the information.

  Meteko [01.11.08 07:10 PM]

I have recently bought a laptop and it runs on vista. I found that the power comsumption is very high compare to my old laptop running on xp. Thanks for you advise.

  Ivan Blinkov [02.15.08 12:09 PM]

Poor power management was one of the major reasons which made me remove the preinstalled Vista from my notebook.But I don't think any utility could change the situation significantly - even with most eyecandy features turned off it's one of the most power-consuming operating system available.

  Joe [04.15.08 02:41 PM]

i have a Toshiba Satellite A135 running Vista and my battery lasts about 2 and a half hours when i use the Power Saver feature in Vista

  Joe [04.15.08 02:45 PM]

i have a Toshiba Satellite A135 running Vista and my battery lasts about 2 and a half hours when i use the Power Saver feature in Vista and i was wondering if that would be considered good or bad? im thinking of upgrading to a twelve cell battery thats why i ask.