| Optimizing Your Pentium(R) Processor Notebook Computer For Battery Run Time
What Is Power Management And Why Do I Have It?
The power management software built into your Pentium(R) processor
notebook system and in Windows* 95 conserves power to extend battery life.
This is done by shutting down various portions of the system when the system
determines that user activity does not justify keeping them active. User activity is
usually detected by the system monitoring keystrokes, mouse clicks, and mouse
movement. Actions that power management may take include: spinning down the
disk drive, dimming the display or turning it off, halting the CPU when the system
is idle, and several levels of shutting down the entire system.
The power management software makes decisions based on user activity and
power management policy values. These values are specified by the user, the
notebook computer manufacturer, and the operating system vendor.
You can modify some of these parameters to allow the power management
software to act more quickly or to delay action in shutting down portions of the
notebook computer.
Longer Battery Run Time Is Obtained By Reducing
Responsiveness
Turning off your notebook computer will maximize your battery life, but it makes
getting work done a lot harder.
To maximize battery run time, choose aggressive power management parameters.
For example, have power management shut down the disk and the display after
one minute of user inactivity. If you normally view the screen for extended periods
of time between using the keyboard or mouse, the display may turn off as you are
reading it. If you find this distracting, increase the display's shutdown timeout
value to more closely match your work habits.
As you use software applications on your notebook computer, be aware of
interactions between the power management parameters you have selected and
your software's activity. For example, if you have selected a three minute
shutdown for the disk drive and your word processor has its autosave feature
configured to save your work to the disk every three minutes, the disk drive may
shut down for only brief periods. This could cause the disk to consume more
power on average than if it were never shut down at all.
On the other hand, waiting the five seconds or so for the disk drive to spin up
may disrupt the way you prefer to work. Having the display shut down before you
have finished reading the page can be annoying. Don't be afraid to experiment
with these settings until your notebook computer works as you want it to work.
Increasing Battery Run Time Of Your Notebook Computer:
- Turn off the autosave feature in your applications (or reduce the
frequency of saves) to allow the disk drive to remain powered down for
extended times. On a notebook computer, the RAM is powered from the
battery rather than the A/C mains. Therefore, power glitches should not be
a problem. Each time autosave saves the file, the hard drive must be
powered up using power at a high rate to spin up, then it idles at lower rate
until power management spins it down again several minutes later. The
disk may run for five or more minutes although it performed useful work
for only a few seconds of that time.
- Use your system RAM to keep commonly used software open. Switching
among applications being held in memory, rather than loading them from
disk, will keep your disk drive powered down for longer periods of time.
- As you become more familiar with your software, turn off wizards in your
applications. If your application is reformatting text, checking spelling,
checking grammar , recalculating spreadsheets, etc. in the background, the
application is unnecessarily keeping the CPU busy. Additionally, wizards
may access the hard disk to look at data or load additional software
required to perform their function. Invoke those features when you need
them, not when the application decides to do so.
- Use your display wisely to conserve your battery. Keep your backlight at
the minimum brightness that you find comfortable to use.
- Rather than that nice wallpaper, use a solid color for the desktop
background. Each time you move, resize, open or close windows, the
background wallpaper must be redrawn. More CPU effort (and thus, more
battery energy) is required to redraw complex images than to redraw a
solid color.
- Use a blank screen as your screensaver. Screensavers that move images
on your screen perform many calculations that unnecessarily consume
power. Also some screensavers perform calculations to provide sound
effects. While screensavers are nice to see (and hear), they usually
perform no useful work, so turn them off or choose a blank-screen
screensaver to hide the display and provide password security.
- Set your notebook computer's power management features to the most
aggressive that you can tolerate.
- The Windows 95 Plus Pack* installs the System Agent in your Startup
folder. The features provided by the System Agent, such as monitoring
your system for backups and automatic disk defragmentation, require
software to be running all the time. This unnecessarily consumes power
and accesses the disk. Perform these functions manually when your
system is attached to power lines.
- If you are leaving your computer for a while to do something else,
suspend your notebook computer to save power.
- Choose a system with Smart Battery.
Windows 95 Power Management Configuration
Control Panel — Verifying Power Management Support
Perform the following steps to ensure that Windows 95 is properly configured for
Power management on your notebook:
- Click the Start button on the taskbar.
- Slide the selector up to Settings, choose Control Panel.
- Double-click the System icon, and then click the Device Manager tab.
- Click the + sign left of the System Devices icon to expand its display.
- If Advanced Power Management support is visible,
double click it to display properties. Device Status
should indicate that the device is working properly.
If Advanced Power Management support is not
visible, it may have not been installed on your system.
See Microsoft notes
Q135136
, Q153395, and
Q137402.
- Click the Settings tab and make sure Enable power management support is checked.
- There should be a battery icon displayed with the title Power.
- Double-click it to display current settings.
- Choose Advanced Power Management to enable Windows 95 to perform power management on your notebook.
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