It is a well known fact that it is possible to extend the battery life of laptops by turning off features that are not needed. This can for instance be hardware devices like modems, Bluetooth and WiFi. There is not really a benefit of keeping those enabled if they are not used ever on the laptop. We have covered applications like Vista Battery Saver before which turn of software components in Vista as well which can not only increase the battery life of the battery but also speed up Vista.
Aerofoil is another program that can help extend Windows Vista laptop battery life by turning off Windows Aero and the Windows Sidebar.
Aerofoil does not rely on the Microsoft .net Framework on the other hand which is probably the most important factor. The computer memory footprint of Aerofoil is therefor much smaller than that of the other program. Plus, it does not require that a specific Microsoft .Net Framework version is installed on the computer to function at all.
The program can be selected to run at startup. It will place a icon in the system tray which can be used to quickly access the available options seen above. It is probably a good idea to have this or any of the other tools running on Vista laptops that run on battery.
Update: Aerofoil has been updated lately. It now supports both Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program’s feature set has also been extended with the more recent updates. In particular, it can be used for the following purposes:
- Disable Aero Glass manually
- Manage the Windows Aero user interface
- Manage power plans of the operating system
- Manage the sidebar of Windows Vista
- Enable a quick hibernate button.
The program has not been tested extensively under Windows 7. The developer notes however that it should provide the same functionality on that operating system.
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The reference for “Vista Battery Saver” is broken.
And lost link tail for Aerofoil in post :)
http://silentdevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/09/aerofoil-144-rated-47100-hot-100-vista.html
All fixed :)
Aerofoil 1.5.0 is now out http://silentdevelopment.blogspot.com/2009/10/aerofoil-150-released.html