Are there any good (free?) tools for monitoring power consumption and aiding in reducing power consumption on a Windows laptop?
I currently have a Lenovo T60p and the tools that Lenovo provides are OK, but nothing really that good. They really just provide a new interface to the Windows Power Manager options, at least from what I've found.
Do you have the newest ThinkVantage Power Manager installed Thomas? The Vista version seems to work pretty well on my current install. It should theoretically do the same under XP.
What kind of battery life are you currently getting?
Right now, it doesn't matter because I'm at home. But when I'm at university, I hate digging out my power cord, as I usually need it at the worst times. The last time I checked my battery life, I was getting ~3 hours on a full charge and full display brightness. I turned down the display to about 50%-60% and I was getting near 4 hours.
I'll check the Power Manager that I have installed and update it if I need to, but I didn't see a "power user" option that give me good measurements and such to help "greenify" my computer.
Rumor Patrol time! Do any of these have an advantage?
(1) Using less flashy graphics. I am using the classic windows schemes and a single color background because I read that this type of thing helps.
(2) Running down your battery from time to time. I've heard everything from getting it below 50% to getting it to near 0% helps improve life.
(3) Sleep and/or Hibernation
@Thomas
1) Using less flashy graphics. I am using the classic windows schemes and a single color background because I read that this type of thing helps.
Not really. The only thing you might do by turning off the XP scheme and going to a single color background is ever so slightly lower CPU use. On a modern CPU, though, these don't use enough cycles or power that it's likely to be measurable.
If you're on Vista, then turning off Aero might make a difference, as it's a lot more demanding on the GPU (and the CPU to a lesser extent).
(2) Running down your battery from time to time. I've heard everything from getting it below 50% to getting it to near 0% helps improve life.
Dunno. But since this is the rumor patrol, I've actually heard that running down the battery doesn't apply to Li-ion batteries. The technique supposedly really did work for NiMH and NiCad, but has no applicability to Li-ion.
(3) Sleep and/or Hibernation
I'm confused here. Yes, sleeping or hibernating will extend the battery life, but neither of them will be doing anything when you're actually using your laptop. If you are going to pick between them for when you aren't using your laptop, go with hibernation. That will definitely save battery over sleeping (at the cost of longer wake-up).
There's a number of tools that are designed to help with this type of thing.. off the top of my head:
In my experience, turning down the brightness and eliminating or disabling anything that taxes your hard drive (like Windows Indexing/Search) or CPU will bring the biggest power-saving benefits.
If you are running Vista a lot of people recommend disabling Aero to save battery life, but I personally don't see any benefit to this, and most of the testing I've seen shows only a 1-4% battery life improvement.