Vista Battery Saver is a software program that has been specifically designed to deal with the issue of faster battery drain in Windows Vista. It gives the user options at hand to turn off the Windows Aero interface and the Windows Vista Sidebar.

Options are to turn off the features whenever the laptop is running on battery, to keep the function activated or to turn it off whenever the battery level reaches a set limit. Vista Battery Saver provides access to the Vista power plans which can be configured from within the interface.

Users who are unsure if the Vista Battery Saver application is reducing battery drain on their laptop running Windows Vista should do the following: Clock the time it takes to completely drain the laptop’s battery without running Vista Battery Saver, charge the battery again and do the same with the application running. It is important to perform the same tasks – or none at all – to be able to compare the results.

The software Vista Laptop Battery Saver (which I found at Windows Vista Tweaks) automates the process for us. The memory resident software waits in the background and reacts when the notebook is changing into battery mode. It will disable the Windows Vista Aero theme completely if the mode is detected, which in turn means that you can work longer in battery mode.

It will also recognize when a power source is connected to the notebook and turn on the Aero theme automatically. This is probably the best solution if you want to work with Aero when you have a power source connected to your notebook. I decided to get rid of Aero completely and work with a custom theme which does not consume that much power.

Update: Service Packs and patches released for the Windows Vista operating system have resolved the situation somewhat. It appears as if the Windows Aero theme is not draining as much battery anymore than before. It is therefor recommended to download and install all Vista Service Packs and patches that Microsoft has made available in the meantime.

The easiest way to download those is via the operating system’s built-in Windows Update applet. Vista users can run it from the start menu of their operating system.

To disable the Aero theme do the following:

Right-click on your desktop and select Personalize from the menu. Choose Windows Color and Appearance and click on Open Classic Appearance Properties for more color options. Select a different theme from the list (non Aero) and click on Apply.

The second battery drainer could be a wrong power setting. If you left-click the little battery icon in the system tray you see which power setting is currently used. I suggest you select the power saver option if the notebook is not connected to a power source. All other settings drain the battery pretty fast.