Evaluate the efficiency of Windows 7 Power Plan settings

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.

Save energy with a good power plan for a Vista notebook

In this edition of the Windows Vista & Windows 7 Report, I’ll show you the proprietary power plan settings on my ASUS laptop and explain how they work. While these power plan settings are designed for this ASUS laptop, they are representative of the types of power plans that other manufacturers create for their laptops.