I am Microsoftie 4 ever (18+ years) working in Windows Services and Content team in the UK, my blog is mainly focused on the Windows family of products and trying to provide help pointers and resources for customers on our products.
Just read this useful command line utility built into Windows 7 for viewing a report about how your laptop is using energy.
Swiss IT Professional and TechNet Blog : Windows 7 – Power Management Reports
“Wondering why your battery life of your laptop is not as good as the manufacturers claim? powercfg -ENERGY You need to run this command from the command prompt with administrator privileges (Run as Administrator). This command will perform a 60 second analysis of the computer’s energy consumption and provide you with a report: (by default in the system32 folder): C:\Windows\system32\energy-report.html It lists the devices and drivers that hamper Sleep, or hinder that the full power saving features of your machine can not be utilized. It also lists if your hardware is capable of S1, S2, S3 or S4 sleep modes”
“Wondering why your battery life of your laptop is not as good as the manufacturers claim?
powercfg -ENERGY
You need to run this command from the command prompt with administrator privileges (Run as Administrator). This command will perform a 60 second analysis of the computer’s energy consumption and provide you with a report: (by default in the system32 folder): C:\Windows\system32\energy-report.html
It lists the devices and drivers that hamper Sleep, or hinder that the full power saving features of your machine can not be utilized.
It also lists if your hardware is capable of S1, S2, S3 or S4 sleep modes”
Looks like I have some things that I can look at to improve my battery life.
Update 28/05/2010 - some additional info and screenshots at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/
Rob
Something I discovered yesterday by chance is a great nifty feature in Live Search in the UK. I often get calls on my mobile from numbers I don’t recognise, especially with area codes that are unfamiliar. So wanting to find where that area code was for I entered into into Live search and hey presto I got the following back.
Which I thought was very smart.
I tried this also in Google and Yahoo but they didn’t seem to have the same feature. So kudos to the Live Search team.
A couple of links also for other Windows live search features you didn’t know about and the latest cricket scores via Live search.
Now we have Lauren (a different one) and her mum Sue.
and why would you pay twice the price?
I am sure all parents appreciate and can empathise with the last comment.
For the other other laptop hunters:
I have mentioned the Microsoft Store before which is a great site for buying Microsoft Software direct from Microsoft, and Chris who runs it here in the UK has told me that it has undergone a bit of a makeover:
Highlights of the new changes include:
Microsoft Store UK – Home
Let us know if you like the new changes.
Here are some more great (and free) training resources from Microsoft Learning that I have mentioned recently (Windows Learning snacks).
Clinic 10125: What's New in Windows 7 for Consumers
Clinic 10077: What's New in Windows 7 for IT Professionals
Clinic 10088: What's New in Windows 7 for Information Workers
Thanks to Tamir for the tip
Every now and then I post up a list of all the articles that have been rated helpful by everyone who had rated them. So I thought it was about time I did it again.
The following 14 articles since the 1st January 2009 are all rated 100%
Slightly off topic from the usual Windows Help but just watched this really interesting video from ZDNet.co.uk about:
“Inside Microsoft Research UK Chris Bishop, chief research scientist, talks to ZDNet UK about turning blue-sky science into commercial products, and whether he has ever told Steve Ballmer he is wrong”
Chris Bishop, chief research scientist, talks to ZDNet UK about turning blue-sky science into commercial products, and whether he has ever told Steve Ballmer he is wrong”
Inside Microsoft Research UK - ZDNet.co.uk
You will have to watch to the end of the video to see what the answer to the Steve Ballmer questions is.
If you like your Windows Vista in Lao (Laos), then you can download the latest Windows Vista Language Interface Pack (LIP) now:
Click here to download the Lao Vista LIP .
Please note that the Lao LIP can only be installed on a system that runs an English version of Windows Vista.
View the Lao Download Center page. for more Lao downloads
Updated 29/10/2009 - a more recent posting on this subject can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/robmar/archive/2009/09/24/updated-windows-7-anti-virus-partners.aspx
Then you might want to try one of our partners listed at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/antivirus-partners/windows-7.aspx
“Important: Before you install antivirus software, check to make sure you don't already have an antivirus product on your computer. If you do, be sure to remove the product you don't want before you install the new one. It can cause problems on your computer to have two different antivirus products installed at the same time.”
And if you are after security products for Windows Vista or Windows XP try:
and if you need any help about security with Windows from the basics through networks, windows firewall and user accounts try out the Windows help and how-to security page
Windows 7: Security software providers
When I checked the Windows Experience Index shortly after I had upgraded to the Win 7 Beta back in January I had a score of 2.0
However after checking following my RC1 install on the same machine with the same hardware (Toshiba Tecra M7) It has increased to 3.4 .
Which is better than when the same machine was running Vista.
I have not read of any major changes between the Beta and RC with how the Windows Experience Score is calculated, although I recall there being differences between Vista and Win 7.
What’s your score? and have you seen a difference between Beta and RC?