power management
Work
SetPower Schedules Your Computer’s Power Management
2:00AM Adam Pash | 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 »
Work
MonitorES Updates, Pauses Any Media Player When You Lock Your PC
2:00AM The How-To Geek | 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 »
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MonitorES Pauses Media, Turns Off Monitor When You Lock Your PC
2:00AM The How-To Geek | 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 »
Fix
Hidden Windows 7 Tool Troubleshoots Sleep Mode Problems
2:00AM The How-To Geek | 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 »
Work
PushMonitOff Links Hot Key Combo To Monitor Power Switch
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | 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] More »
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NoSleepHD Stops External Hard Drives From Shutting Down
2:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | 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] More »
Fix
3:51PM Angus Kidman | 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,
Worried About Your Computer Overheating?
3:51PM Angus Kidman | 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,
Work
9:30AM Angus Kidman | 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]
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Where Does Your Notebook’s Power Really Go?
9:30AM Angus Kidman | 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]
More »
Fix
Computer Power Management Myths Debunked
3:59AM Gina Trapani | If you think booting up and shutting down your computer negates the benefits of turning it off to begin with, or that your screensaver is saving you energy, get thee to Ted Samson’s rundown of five PC power myths and why they’re wrong. Save yourself and your company some cash and compute more sustainably by getting your computer’s power management in order. More »
Work
9:00AM Angus Kidman | One of the main development goals for Windows 7 is improving battery performance on laptop systems. Much of that is down to the manufacturer who builds the machine, but Windows 7 also includes a new command line tool for identifying power problems. As demonstrated in this morning’s WinHEC keynote, you can type powerconfig /energy duration:20 and generate a report identifying potential sources of power problems, ranging from poorly configured Wi-Fi to battery-draining background applications. While you can set shorter durations for the test, running for longer identifies more potential problems. The current public builds of Windows 7 don’t have lots of UI elements enabled, so it’s likely that there’ll be a friendlier front-end to this system before the final version arrives — but it’s still a nice tool for the power tweaker. More »
Windows 7 Offers Command Line Battery Use Assessment
9:00AM Angus Kidman | One of the main development goals for Windows 7 is improving battery performance on laptop systems. Much of that is down to the manufacturer who builds the machine, but Windows 7 also includes a new command line tool for identifying power problems. As demonstrated in this morning’s WinHEC keynote, you can type powerconfig /energy duration:20 and generate a report identifying potential sources of power problems, ranging from poorly configured Wi-Fi to battery-draining background applications. While you can set shorter durations for the test, running for longer identifies more potential problems. The current public builds of Windows 7 don’t have lots of UI elements enabled, so it’s likely that there’ll be a friendlier front-end to this system before the final version arrives — but it’s still a nice tool for the power tweaker. More » 