Improve Battery Life

Once again, Martin at ghacks presents a great computing tip, this time on how to extend notebook battery life using SpeedSwitchXP. This application lets you take control of your CPU speed so that you can slow it down and so use less power when you aren’t running CPU-intensive applications. You could call it underclocking, as opposed to overclocking. To be honest, I thought this was something that was built in to some PCs already, but obviously not.

Anyway, as is often the case, an even better tip turned up in the comments for his post from Cam who pointed readers to Notebook Hardware Control. I have to admit this looks like a far more powerful tool than SpeedSwitch. Not only does it allow you to control the power consumption of your CPU and so boost your battery, it provides the following features:

• Control the hardware and system power management
• Customize the notebook (open source ACPI Control System)
• Prolong the battery lifetime
• Cool down the system and reduce power consumption
• Monitor the hardware to avoid system failure
• Make your notebook quiet

Get the settings right and you should see a much improved uptime when operating on battery. More than that, improved battery life means you are using less power overall, and that means a greener notebook. Unfortunately, the Pro version costs money, which is where Sciencetext reader Slartibartfast comes to the rescue:

I would suggest you take a look at SpeedFan, therefore, which is a fully-functioning and free alternative.