Laptop Power Saving Annoyance

Beecher

I very recently got a dell laptop from the outlet store, one of those Pentium M ones with great battery life etc, the only problem is that when its not plugged in the screen brightness drops by half etc to save power. Now I would gladly swap battery life to achieve the same performance when not plugged in as opposed to being plugged in but I can find an option to do this (the power options in control panel nor the bios settings seem to be able to change this). Anyone any ideas?

Zynks

Check in the bottom right of your screen if there is an icon of a checkered flag (Intel Speed Step Technology). If you do, right click and select maximum performance. Let me know if it works.

Zynks

PS. do the change when unplugged from the power supply.

ressem

Intel's speedstep flag won't be present in XP. It's meant to be built into the OS.

If the brightness of the screen is the important issue then setting the Power Scheme under Control panel\power options to presentation should work. (Tried on laptop here and screen got brighter when unplugged )
(Of course it did, I had screen brightness set to max in battery mode on my dell bios)

vibe666

dell laptops have the screen brightness button as a blue function key, on the arrows.

hold down the blue function key (usually on the bottom left) and start tapping the arrow keys. i think it's the up and down arrow, but it might be the left/right ones, i'm not 100% sure without one in front of me.

one or the other though, anyway.

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Gilgamesh

I would recommend to download the Intel Speedstep Patch from the Intel Website,
even SP2 had issues with the XP implemented Speedstep driver

Beecher

Cheers lads for you help, ive got the brightness sorted out now (there was a bios setting to control brightness when unplugged) now my only issue is losing my wireless connection when the laptop isnt plugged in, ill try the patch and hopefully it will help

vibe666

there's nothing wrong with speedstep, or anything else. it's just set to run at a lower brightness when running off batteries to conserve power, like most other laptops.

all he needs to do is turn it up.

you can permanently set it in the bios as well, to keep the same brightness levels when not plugged into the mains.

personally, I tend to leave it down unless I need it brighter, as it makes quite a difference on battery life.
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odie

Go into Power Options in the control panel and set the Power Scheme to Home/Office, this worked for me to stop the same type of issue.

Also check in the Bios to se if there are any power options that can be reset.