A colleague recently asked me if was really true that Windows 7 power management settings were more efficient and would allow longer battery life when running on a laptop. I told him that based on my experience with running Windows 7 on my laptop; it did indeed appear to be true that improvements in Windows 7 power-management technologies provided me with longer battery life.
Of course, in order to get as much battery power as possible out of a single charge, I must admit that I did spend some time tweaking my Power Plan settings in the Control Panel’s Power Options tool. I also uncovered a new feature in Windows 7’s PowerCfg command line tool that allowed me to evaluate the efficiency of my Power Plan settings.
In this edition of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I’ll briefly examine Windows 7’s Power Plans. I’ll then show you how to use Windows 7’s PowerCfg command line tool to evaluate the efficiency of your Power Plan settings.
