DON’T USE WINDOWS POWER SETTINGS ON YOUR LAPTOP
The smarter way to boost battery life
Windows has its own built-in power settings that let you set the length of the time before your screen turns off or your computer goes to sleep when idle. However, if a program is running in the background it can prevent these power-saving measures from
kicking in, resulting in unnecessary sary power drain – annoying if you’re running your laptop on battery. AutoPowerOptionsOK (APO) gives es you more control by letting you specify precisely how and when your PC’S power-saving modes should activate.
STEP 1
Download APO by going to www.snipca.com/32541, then clicking the ‘Autopoweroptionsok.zip’ link 1 . Once downloaded, open the ZIP file, click ‘Extract all’ 2 , select where to save the program (we created a new folder called APO in C:\program Files 3 ), then click Extract 4 (press Alt+c if you can’t see this button). In the window that opens, right-click ‘APO-OK.EXE’, select ‘Send to’, then ‘Desktop (create shortcut)’. Now double-click the new APO shortcut on your desktop to run the program. Windows Smartscreen may display a warning about the program, but it is safe so select ‘More info’ at the top, then ‘Run anyway’.
STEP 2
APO lets you set a timer before your PC’S power-saving features are activated when idle. In the first section, you can set a timer for switching your screen off and decide which actions 1 will restart the timer. For example, if you set this to ‘Mouse events, then only moving your mouse will restart the timer (meaning, if you only use your keyboard in this period, the timer will continue to run down). If you don’t want APO to switch your screen off, change this setting to ‘Don’t use’.
STEP 3
The second box 1 lets you choose the duration of the timer - you can select from a range of preset options, from 10 seconds up to six hours. There’s no button to apply your new settings, so they will activate as soon as you’ve chosen. You’ll also notice a green bar under these settings 2 , indicating how long is left on the timer.
STEP 4
Turning your laptop off will help save some battery power, but not as much as putting it into sleep mode. The second section in APO lets you change the settings for this in the same way as for your screen - select what types of action should reset the countdown timer and how long it should run for. A warning will appear one minute before your computer goes into sleep mode (to reset the timer at this point, click Cancel 1 ). You can change when this warning appears in the box under the countdown bar 2 .
STEP 5
You can also use AOP to switch to a different power plan when it’s idle. As before, you first need to choose a length for the countdown timer and which actions should restart it 1 . Next, in the box to the right of ‘then:’, select the power plan for when you’re using your computer (we chose Performance 2 ). In the box to the right of ‘otherwise:’, select the power plan to switch to when the countdown ends (we chose ‘Battery saver’ 3 ). The tick indicates which power plan is currently active 4 . You can create new power plans in Windows by clicking Start, typing Choose a power plan, pressing Enter then clicking ‘Create a power plan’.
STEP 6
If you find your countdown timer is being restarted by very slight mouse movements (for example, caused by train or car movements when travelling), try adjusting the mouse tolerance setting. The default tolerance is ‘2 pixels’, which means only mouse movements of more than two pixels will restart the timer, but you can increase this to up to 10 pixels. To do this, open the Program menu at the top 1 , select ‘Mouse tolerance’, then choose a new measurement 2 .
STEP 7
APO will run in the background after you’ve closed it, but you can also set it to load whenever Windows starts. To do this, click the Program menu, then ‘Start with Windows’ 1 (this option will now have a tick next to it). To deactivate this setting, simply click this option again. And if you want to temporarily pause all power-saving settings in APO, click the Disabled box 2 .