I have recently bought a new Sony Vaio Fit 15 (i7) to replace my Asus U31JG notebook. The Asus was great with battery life, and I could happily use it for a couple of hours, close the lid, put it back in my bag and find that when I open the lid the next day there is juice still in the battery. It ran the Asus Power4Gear software, and I generally ran it in the Quiet Office mode for general email/word/browsing duties. The new Sony has a faster i7 (3537u) instead of an i5 (460M) so I can understand that it uses more juice to give it that extra grunt. I have tried to copy the Power4Gear settings by going through the advanced power saving dialog and setting everything the same. However, the battery doesn't last anywhere near as long, and if I close the lid and put the laptop in my bag - it usually starts up next time with a low battery warning. 1. Is there a generic application like Power4Gear that can use hot keys to switch power modes? 2. Are there any recommended power saving settings? 3. Should I be using hibernate/sleep etc?
Laptops isn't like desktop. There is no real or full standard when it comes to power saving. I mean yes, you have what Windows Vista and later provides. Each OEM for select computers (usually the high end ones, hence why better battery life (let alone a way better battery and bigger one)), inserts their own circuitry design to control power of components. For example, my Dell laptop, the extended power profile which I can select in Windows Power Plan, does the following: - Reduce the monitor refresh rate to 40Hz - Turn off the power of Firewall - Turn off the power of the Optical drive - Turn off the power of the Media Card ready - Reduce the power of the USB ports These are things that your laptop can't do. If you install the Dell software on your laptop, the software while can communicate with the included driver to control the system power, the driver can't do anything, as there is no hardware to communicate too. It's like if you force in the AMD Radeon drivers, and you have not this graphic card, and play around in the AMD Control Panel. All the options won't do anything as there is no Radeon graphic card to communicate them to. I think the best you might be able to do, is create a custom 40Hz resolution for your laptop, and use that to help easy the GPU work load a bit. Assuming your monitor support 40Hz. That said, to answer your questions: 1- There isn't. I have made a software which I use on my desktop and laptop, which control the graphic card performance which helps extend my laptop battery life a bit more and make my desktop quieter, but it's for Nvidia GPUs. If you are interested it's on my signature. 2- Use Windows Power Saver profile. You can go in the advanced options of Power Saver power plan, and force to limit the CPU speed at 0% (basically the minimum the CPU can possibly go, it won't go 0MHz ) Like this, instead of having your CPU performance move ups and down as you do things or not, you can lock it at minimum performance (~800MHz, if I am not mistaken) when on that profile. Of course, use it when on battery. 3- Yes you should.
Thanks for the info GoodBytes. I have played with the CPU max/min settings (these are what the Asus Power4Gear seemed to tweak so I have used the same settings). Maybe Sony will come out with a piece of software at some point... The battery is set to only charge to 80% to try and extend it's long term life, so that lowers the battery charge life. There is a setting to reduce it down to even 50%! The laptop has an nVidia GPU (a 735) but it will be switched over to Intel HD 4000 most of the time. Is there any app that can have a hot-key to switch the power saving modes? The Asus had a physical button that was used. I have tried using Shortcut hotkeys, but they don't seem to work. If there was a little program that did it, that would be worthwhile using.
I have just installed "Power Plan Assistant" and set it so that when I unplug the power it switches to the power saving mode, and when I plug it back in, it goes to balanced. So hibernate is better to use than Sleep? I have an SSD
Well a feature in my software, give you that ability.. actually it's all automatic (with options). By default for laptops (as it can differentiate the 2), when you plug it your system, it set your Windows Power Plan to High Performance, when on battery, Power Saver. You can have it set so that your Windows power plan switch to High Performance when you run a game (it has a long community support catalog of games and applications, which you can add/edit). I guess I can see in extracting from my software this feature, and make a software stand alone. But you can use my software as is, and have it not touch your GPU, if wonder.
It would also be handy to have some form of hotkey to turn off the backlit keyboard so that it can be switched off in the day. There is an option in the menus, but it isn't straight forward to get to. I will have a look at Nv GPU Pro to use instead of Power Plan Assistant
Hibernate turns off your computer. Sleep only powered the RAM (mostly.. it powered the CPU at some OS specified interval, and if you have Windows 8, power the wireless or wired card at extreme low power to get instant connect when you wake it up, and also keep modern UI apps somewhat updated. It's not live update if you wonder. Every now and then Windows while your computer is sleep, will collect REQUESTS of update, and every now and then, it will power up the wireless or wired card, and the CPU a hint higher than near off, and update everything and goes back to sleep). It's some very fancy thing going on. Battery life on Sleep is not much effected, as we are talking about extreme low power operation that you can't have access. I won't be surprised if your CPU goes under 5MHz for this.
The laptop has Win8, and there is aparently a partition set aside for Sony Rapid Wake. Maybe it's best for me to leave it set to Sleep then? I have just installed your software, but it sort of ran, then deleted itself?
That is laptop specific. In my case, I have a keyboard combination which is hardware control (so OS independent, I can do it in the BIOS even), which allows me to turn it on or off, or follow the ambient light sensor. Cool. If you are actually interested in my software for your desktop or something, I am working on a new version which has a huge deal of improvements and offer the ability to bind itself with MSI AfterBurner or EVG Precision, if you prefer these overclock software to control your graphic card, over the built-in one. But anyway, to have it not touch your GPU. Once Nv GPU Pro is installed, open the Nv GPU Pro Management Console, than at the bottom of the left column, click on "Profiles" tab. When you do, you'll see on tree list 2 profile: Power Saver and High Performance. Simply, click on Power Saver, and select: "Use custom overclock software", and leave everything blank. Do the same for High Performance.
Sleep is good when you'll be using the computer again shortly. If you are going to leave it over night on battery, then hibernate I have a feeling that your anti-virus marked my software as a virus, false positive, and delete it. I'll PM you the latest dev which should not 'cause problem. By the way what is your anti-virus, so that I can test on my side?
