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Notebook Hardware Control

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:10:43 +0000

When you are working with notebooks on the road you have to ensure that you make the best of the remaining battery power. Nothing’s more annoying than a notebook that is automatically powering down because of a battery running out of power. One way to take care of this problem is to reduce the power needed when working with a notebook running on battery.

One of the bet ways to save battery is by reducing the power of several core components such as the processor or graphic adapters.

Notebook Hardware Control is a free software program that has been designed to take care of the needs of notebook users. Power management is however only one – very extensive – option of the software.

The software comes preinstalled with several hardware profiles like max. battery, dynamic switching or battery optimized. These profiles can be easily set by right-clicking the icon in the System Tray.

The maximum battery setting can for example be used to use the notebook for as long as possible while dynamic switching ensures that battery life will be saved as long as the system does not need additional power.

It is also possible to customize those settings further by defining multipliers and voltage settings manually.

Next to that are similar options for the video card and hard disk. The hard disk settings go further by providing access to advanced power management and acoustic management settings. An Advanced Configuration and Power Interface system can be enabled as well.

Notebook Hardware Control is a software program that is compatible with 32-bit editions of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 or higher.

Hard Drive Noise Reduction

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:35:16 +0000

Being noise sensitive can have a huge impact on a daily work routine. Having to use a noisy computer can be a distraction and it might even cause sickness in the long run. One of the components that still gets neglected quite a bit when it comes to noise reduction is the computer’s hard drive. That’s understandable because it usually is not the loudest component of the computer.

That honor would be reserved for the fans of the video card, processor, power unit and case. You might not even hear the noise of the hard drive until you decide to lower down the noise of the other components. Hard drives on the other hand can cause a very high distracting pitching noise.

One possibility to lower the noise of the hard drive would be to use special hard drive cases and other hardware to reduce the noise. Software solutions on the other hand are rare, most are outdated and some even require the creation of a boot disk before they can be run.

WinAAM is a refreshing change. It is compatible with all Windows NT operating systems including the popular Windows XP and Windows Vista. It requires no installation and can be started right after the download has finished.

The software will automatically detect connected IDE or SATA drives and display the status of the Acoustic Management of the device.

The status can either be inactive, low or normal and the noise reduction software displays possible options the acoustic management can be set to in a basic interface. The option to test the changes is given in the application but it was badly implemented. Changing a setting will close the application at the end which means that the application has to be started again to perform the test.

The software can be downloaded at the author’s homepage. The same page contains a version for Mac OS Classic and tips for Mac OS X users.

Reduce Hard Drive Noise

Martin Brinkmann — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:29:45 +0000

Many modern hard drives support a function called AAM – Automatic Acoustic Management. The feature is currently supported by most hard drives from Samsung, Maxtor and Hitachi. Most hard drives have the feature disabled by default which decreases access time but increases the noise level of the hard drive. If you prefer silence over performance you might want to enable AAM to decrease the noise level of your hard drive and slightly increase the access time.

Access time has nothing to do with data transfer rates which means it is probably a good idea to activate AAM if you think that your hard drive makes to much noises. All you need is the freeware Hitachi Feature Tool. This tool makes it possible to enable, disable or choose a custom value for the Automatic Accustic Management feature.

The noise reduction depends on the hard drive of course. The noise reduction for the Samsung SP2504C was 0.5 Sone from 1.9 to 1.4 Sone by using the custom value 170. A Raptor WD1500ADFD hard drive had a reduction of only 0.1 Sone from 4.1 to 4.0 Sone. The Hitachi Feature Tool will tell you if your hard drive supports Automatic Accustic Management prior to making any changes.