Sunday, July 17, 2011

How to Boost Windows 7 Laptop Battery Life with Automated Solution from Microsoft

Squeezing every last drop of battery life from a Windows laptop is now easier to do with an automated solution offered free of charge by Microsoft.

The Redmond company is providing customers with a Fix It download via its Microsoft Support website, designed to make their laptop batteries live longer.

The solution works for Windows 7 machines, but also for computers running earlier versions of Windows.

Users need only visit the “Fix power consumption problems and extend the laptop battery life” webpage, download the Fix It troubleshooter and launch it on their Windows laptop.

“Automatically detect system settings that can affect power usage, such as timeout and sleep settings, display settings, and screensavers, and restore them to their default settings,” the Redmond company reveals.

Some customers might already be aware of the fact that the manner in which their machine is set up has a direct impact on power consumption and battery life.

The Fix It troubleshooter is designed to automatically identify problems and set up Windows 7 laptops per the best settings to extend battery life as much as possible.

The software giant provided the following list with the issues that this Fix It solution resolves:

“- The period of time before the computer goes to sleep is set too long

- Screen saver is used instead of setting the computer to enter sleep mode

- Display brightness is set too high

- Power plan is not set to the most efficient power plan

- Wireless adaptor in not optimized for power saving

- Minimum processor state is set too high.”

I think it’s obvious that while some of this settings can be set manually by the vast majority of customers, there are also a few which are a tad less user friendly.