Month: June 2008

Ways to improve Battery Life in Vista

Paul


Turn off Sidebar:
Turning of the windows Sidebar helps with performance and reliability of Vista. Some people tell me it is nice to have that up. I say this, it’s using system resources and isn’t going to help you out when you’re running on a battery. Here is how you do this:
Control Panel>Classic View>Windows Sidebar Properties


[ad]Check your Power Plan when you are on battery:
Doing this will help you with your battery power. By making sure your got your CPU on power Saver when on battery power you will save battery life and will give you more time to use the laptop.

Control Panel>Classic View>Power Options


Change windows for Performance:

By changing Windows Aero to look like basic you can boost your battery life by not using any unneeded video acceleration. Doing this will save your battery and will give you 30 more minutes on your battery. It’s 4% to 5% battery increase but all this will make your battery last longer.
Control Panel>Classic View>Performance Information and Tools>Adjust Visual Effects

As you can see, if you like some of the effects, you can customize it to your liking, but keep in mind the more you use the less your have on battery life. It also affects your system speed, so you may want the computer speed so keep the appearance to a minimum.

Turn off UAC:
UAC has been nothing but trouble for me so I’ve just turned it off, I suspect it is also helping my battery but I am not going to hazard a guess on how much.
Start Menu>type>Msconfig on the Search bar. run the Msconfig and then you go to: Select Tools Tab, then find Disable UAC and double click it. Reboot and you no longer have UAC.

Download Battery Saver:

Downloading Battery Saver will let you pick when and how to deactivate some of these things when you unplug your power cable. This little Utility comes with a lot of possibilities. It allows you to decide when to deactivate Windows Aero and Sidebar which helps on battery life.

There are several other things to consider when you’re trying to save battery power:

Turn off all unnecessary programs in the background.

Dim your LCD by hitting the Function Key + Left Arrow several times.

This also will improve battery life by not draining it. It will dim it to the lowest setting and will extend the battery.

[ad]

These tips will improve your battery life in Vista but I do not know by how much time will be extended. I hope these tips will help you out when it comes to using your laptop out in the wild and not wanting to worry about time. Let me know what you think and I’d like to hear all the comments. Enjoy

It’s Done

Paul

I’ve done with the updating of the website, I’ll be editing it and making it even better as time goes buy!!  I hope people like it!!

You too could win!!!

Paul

As of this morning, I’ve found out that I will have a shared hosting account from Geeknewscentral. I want some help coming up with ideas for the website. I decided I will use a survey. If you have been wanting to blog but don’t have the experience and wanting to get your feet wet, Fill out this Survey!! You too could have you name on my blog as an author to a blog post!! If not still fill out this survey.


Click Here to take survey

I will choice 2 people Randomly from this survey. Enter to win contest!!

Survey Ends June 20, 2008 at 12:00 AM

Time Waner needs to get off it’s DUFF!!

Paul

I was listening to Geek News Central, and he sent out an appeal for people to make a comment or blog about Time Warner and to talk about this Bandwitdth Cap they are testing!!

So here’s my thoughts and concerns about this 40 Gigabyte for 55 dollars cap.

Let’s say you have the basic service with broadband cable access. You use your broadband service for several things. Some of these things are VOIP(Voice Over Internet Protocol), Such as Skype or AIM , Download movies or Shows from Itunes store and watch shows also from Hulu or Fancast. Now Let’s talk about the math of this.

If we are under this bandwidth cap, we call someone we would be watching our minutes and time talking to whoever we are talk to. If we want to download a movie from Itunes the shows for Itunes are on Average from Itunes around 500 megabytes per show and 700 megabytes for a movie. Now we know it could be bigger or smaller depending on the Graphical textures of the movie. If you want to get a movie in High Def, the download would be around 1.5 gigabytes of space. Now this alone doing the math would add up to 80 tv shows, 50 movies, 26 HD movies. Now if you didn’t do anything else with your ISP you would of course be in good shape. Now let’s not forget about the streaming TV shows and Movies you can watch from Hulu and Fancast. Now Hulu offers HD clips, they are talking about adding HD movies and other things. I use Hulu and Fancast as my primary way to watch shows legally and not have to worry about using Time Warner. I don’t like the idea of having Time Warner try to push this on me so I’d figure I show you just how quickly you would use up the 40 Gigabytes of bandwidth.

Now the way I see it, I don’t need Digital Cable, I get all my local cable through the Air and I watch what I want from these other media sources, I feel that I can get all my media through the Internet and decide what is proper to watch and not have to worry about Ratings on the digital cable. I know everything that is broad casted over the air is rated PG-13 and when my kids get old enough, I will not have to worry about that aspect of growing up.

Now what does that mean, I want everyone to Contact Time Warner, and make a statement saying they do not think this cap is fair or right!! You can also Call Time Warner at 212.484.8000 That is their Main HQ, and tell them directly that you are concerned about this Cap and that if they do this you’ll find some where else to go. Make a Stand and sound out!!! This is a Campaign to make these Media companies know we have the right to decide what we want and when we want it, we don’t have to have there media we can get our media as we want. If we don’t do this, there will be no hope for us all!!!



Windows Vista Hidden Super Fetch

Paul

I was talking to a friend last night about Vista. She was talking about speed and reliability, I suggested that she use ReadyBoost. What is Readyboost? It retrieves all the important files and documents that it needs after you start up. Microsoft says:

Windows Vista introduces Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system. You can use non-volatile flash memory, such as that on a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional memory “under the hood.”
[Via Microsoft]

So by saying you can use a USB for this. All your really doing is using external memory to help augment the internal memory. So you system doesn’t have to cache everything on the hard drive. It will speed up the system, I know it does on mine!!

What is Super Fetch?

SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they’ll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also runs background programs, like disk defragmenting and Windows Defender, at low priority so that they can do their job but your work always comes first.
[Via Microsoft]

So now that you know what this is let’s talk about how it speeds up your system. Readyboost uses someting like Super Fetch and reads all it can and stores it in memory, the most common programs, the most common applications and keeps it in a memory cache. Oh now here’s where it gets interesting. Memory Cache is simply the excess amount of information that can’t be used in ram. So this excess information would go to the cache memory directory and create a file for that particular information so it can organize and be ready to launch and speed up the system. In theory, The information that it has organized onto the directory would be easier and quicker to read so as not to use up a lot of file processing. It’s like the old saying an apple a days keeps the doctor away. See, Windows is constently looking at what you open up the most and wants to keep those files loaded as much as because it is quicker that way.

So how do I use Readyboost?

This is a simple way to use Readyboost.

  1. Get an USB memory stick preferably twice the size of your memory (You can also use Sd cards if you have an SD reader.)
  2. Put it in the slot
  3. Right Click on the drive
  4. Select Properties
  5. Select Readyboost tab (remember the card or USB device has to be fast enough to use it)
  6. Select use this device
  7. hit Apply, and then Ok

That’s it, you’ve completed the steps to get Readyboost to work . Enjoy