We’ve made brief mention of it before, but today we’re taking a closer look at SetCPU, the app that makes overclocking happen on Android — as well as other ways to use it. More »
Dear Lifehacker, Every time I turn a light or appliance on/off, the sound from my LCD TV cuts out for a second or so (picture remains fine). I have my TV, PS3 and stereo hooked up via a basic surge protector board but was wondering whether upgrading to a more robust surge protector (probably with the eco/green power saving capabilities) would solve this annoyance? Thanks, Ryan More »
Windows only: Windows ships with some solid power management options, but it misses the mark on one issue: Most of us need different energy-saving schemes at different times of the day. SetPower adjusts your power management settings on a user-specified schedule. More »
Windows only: Tiny, portable utility MonitorES not only turns off the monitor when you lock your PC, it also pauses almost any media player and even sets your Google and Yahoo IM status to away. More »
Windows only: Tiny utility MonitorES pauses your media player, turns off your monitor and sets Google Talk to away whenever you lock your PC. More »
Windows only: Ever wonder why your laptop’s battery seems to die too quickly? The Windows Help blog points out a hidden command-line switch that generates a report with loads of helpful troubleshooting information. More »
Windows only: PushMonitOff is a nifty little stand-alone executable that instantly turns your monitors off with a hot key combination, allowing you to flip them back on when needed. Why would you want to turn off your monitor by keyboard instead of using the the physical monitor button? If you manually turn off the monitor, you can’t awaken the monitors with input from the computer. Once you activate the hot key combo and shut down your monitors with PushMonitorOff, any input from the keyboard or mouse will turn them back on. If you’re sporting multiple monitors, clicking two keys on your keyboard also saves you the reach of flipping two, three, or more buttons to power down without feeling like you’re shutting down a power station. Don’t laugh—when clicking my bank of monitors off, I feel like I should be hearing turbines winding down. The default combination is SHIFT+F1, but can be modified to any combination you like by accessing PushMonitOff settings via the system tray icon. PushMonitOff is a portable and stand-alone freeware application, Windows only. Photo by Lemsipmatt. PushMonitOff [via EliteFreeware]
Windows only: Tiny utility NoSleepHD stops external hard drives from powering down, bypassing the mandatory sleep mode built into many USB drives—and eliminating the delay while the drive powers back up. Using the utility just requires launching, selecting an external hard drive, and starting NoSleep mode—which writes to a file every minute so the drive never has a chance to power down, eliminating the delay when accessing files on the drive. This application does the exact opposite of getting green with your computer, but could come in handy if your home media server has issues dealing with the drives shutting down. NoSleepHD is free and open source, works for Windows only. Readers using Linux could simply create a cron job that writes to a file to keep the drive awake.
NoSleepHD [via gHacks]With proper (that is, hideous) summer temperatures swamping most of the country, it seems timely to remind the Lifehacker community of some of the useful techniques you can use to make sure your beloved PC isn’t a victim of heatstroke. Beyond keeping your working environment cool and ensuring decent airflow, there are more specific steps you can take. For laptop users,
A post on Microsoft’s Windows 7 blog offers some interesting insight into how power consumption works on a current notebook. As the graph shows, your display consumes almost half of the total power, with the combined efforts of the chipset and processor running a close second. Improving those numbers is one of the targets for Windows 7, though I’m deeply sceptical of the claim that “most systems resume from sleep in less than 2 seconds”, improved boot times for the platform notwithstanding. Even with a relatively speedy resume, sleep functionality has also been mixed with some recent Windows notebooks I’ve owned — many have done a singularly awful job of dealing with attached devices or even reconnecting to networks. But there’s always hope, isn’t there?
Windows 7 Energy Efficiency [Engineering Windows 7]
