Rob Beschizza
Gear

How To Get More Battery Life From Vista UMPCs

If you just decided to buy a UMPC without doing a lot of research, chances are it came with Vista, and runs out of batteries about 90 minutes after you turn it on. There’s a lot you can do, however, to improve this woeful situation; top of the list is to transmigrate oneself to a […]

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If you just decided to buy a UMPC without doing a lot of research, chances are it came with Vista, and runs out of batteries about 90 minutes after you turn it on. There's a lot you can do, however, to improve this woeful situation; top of the list is to transmigrate oneself to a parallel universe where Microsoft bothered to make an medium-size operating system to go with its medium-size devices. Failing that, UMPC Portal has the rundown on power-saving tricks for Vista users in this dimension:

# Disable Windows sidebar. Well known to take processing power.

# Disable on-screen mouse. Learn how to use the mouse without the on-screen version. Saves memory and processing power.

# Disable indexing. This tends to keep the disk working overtime. Highly recommended.

# Reduce screen candy. Go to Performance Settings and change the setting to "Adjust for best performance" and then re-enable visual styles.

# Disable Windows Defender. Its a security hit but personally, I think its worth it.

Follow the link below for a stack more.

I was half-serious about Microsoft, though: it's really dropped the ball with Vista as far as UMPCs are concerned. The result is a fresh interest in bespoke operating systems, cut from the linux cloth, for such devices. This might not be something to cheer about: as far as everyday users are concerned, a tailored linux might as well be completely unique as far as easy-to-use applications are concerned. Zaurus fans will know what I'm talking about.

13 optimization tips for Vista on UMPCs. [UMPC Portal]