One of the improvements in Vista I really appreciate is the better control over the power settings. Working off a notebook most of the time, it is very helpful to be able to save battery life more easily.

In fact that’s not entirely honest, most of the time I am plugged into the power but I still use the power settings to keep the notebook in Power Saver. Why? Well without this the fan is going constantly. So Power Saver reduces the speed of the CPU and keeps it quiet.

The problem is that it slows down the notebook quite significantly. No problem when I’m writing blog posts, but it was a problem when I was preparing a Vista recovery disc last night. It’s quite an involved task for the computer so I was left waiting around.

What I should have used is the Balanced power plan, which is rather clever. Rather than forcing me to accept fast and loud or slow and quiet it adapts to what the computer needs. Like the Power Saver mode, it slows the CPU to 50% of it’s normal speed. But unlike Power Saver it doesn’t keep it there. As the load on the CPU increases it gradually increases the speed

So why didn’t I use it? Well first I forgot, but also because I enabled the Presentation power plan in it’s place and so didn’t think about it.

Left click on the battery icon in the Notification Area and then on More power options. Click on the down arrow to the right of where it say Show additional plans. Balanced should appear in this list.

Click in the radio button to bring it back. The change is made immediately. I could tell quite easily because I was on battery (the joys of the train) and the screen went dim. On the other hand the air con is so loud that no one is going to complain about the noise of the fan if I do anything taxing.