Adjusting screen brightness below default range?

[BetaAddict]

I have always struggled to understand why MS has never implemented a way to have more control over the screen brightness levels similar to how Mac screens can dim down to the point were you can just barely see the screen but the text is still readable. In most environments where lighting is optimal, a low setting is sufficient to do work on the go while significantly extending battery life as the screen is basically the biggest energy consumer. Does anyone know a program or tweak that will allow this in Win7?

[cooky560 Veteran]

If you have an nVidia or ATI graphics card you can in XP by clicking on "advanced" on the settings page, then clicking the control centre tab. It's pretty easy from here to enter new brightness / contract / color settings etc. You could also try giving the color profiles setting a look in

In windows 7 I'm not sure on how to do it, but the same panel is accessible if you have the Catalyst control centre system tray icon

[greenwizard88]

  On 30/09/2011 at 23:48, BetaAddict said:

I have always struggled to understand why MS has never implemented a way to have more control over the screen brightness levels similar to how Mac screens can dim down to the point were you can just barely see the screen but the text is still readable. In most environments where lighting is optimal, a low setting is sufficient to do work on the go while significantly extending battery life as the screen is basically the biggest energy consumer. Does anyone know a program or tweak that will allow this in Win7?

They do? I mean, I have a brightness up and brightness down button right on my keyboard. If you're talking about the specific implementation, it's because each keyboard/monitor/motherboard is different, so it's up to Dell/HP/etc to write their own drivers for the hardware they use.

[BetaAddict]

  On 30/09/2011 at 23:50, cooky560 said:

If you have an nVidia or ATI graphics card you can in XP by clicking on "advanced" on the settings page, then clicking the control centre tab. It's pretty easy from here to enter new brightness / contract / color settings etc. You could also try giving the color profiles setting a look in

In windows 7 I'm not sure on how to do it, but the same panel is accessible if you have the Catalyst control centre system tray icon

I can do this with ATI Catalyst on Win7 as well, but this isn't the same thing as dimming the LCD backlight. The only result of this would be having a distorted coloring if I were to adjust the brightness through the video card driver.

[BetaAddict]

  On 30/09/2011 at 23:55, greenwizard88 said:

They do? I mean, I have a brightness up and brightness down button right on my keyboard. If you're talking about the specific implementation, it's because each keyboard/monitor/motherboard is different, so it's up to Dell/HP/etc to write their own drivers for the hardware they use.

Yes, I know...thanks for pointing that out. :/

I'm talking about reducing the brightness even further down below what Win7 already allows. If you put a mac at it's lowest brightness setting and compare it to win7 lowest setting, the mac can go all the way down to like 20% of full brightness whereas the pc is still around 50%, which is a huge waste of power. I'd really like to get more than 2 hours of battery life on my laptop, especially when I have four hours lecture every afternoon.

[greenwizard88]

Let me finish some calc and I'll give you every trick in the book I know to extend battery life and explain how it all works, but if you're only getting 2 hours, your battery problably isn't going to be able to get you 2x that length no matter what you do.

[cooky560 Veteran]

  On 01/10/2011 at 00:05, BetaAddict said:

Yes, I know...thanks for pointing that out. :/

I'm talking about reducing the brightness even further down below what Win7 already allows. If you put a mac at it's lowest brightness setting and compare it to win7 lowest setting, the mac can go all the way down to like 20% of full brightness whereas the pc is still around 50%, which is a huge waste of power. I'd really like to get more than 2 hours of battery life on my laptop, especially when I have four hours lecture every afternoon.

I actually think the mac brightness setting is less than ideal, my Windows monitor goes from looking like it's off at 0% to almost solid white at 100% (infact it's bright enough to dual as a 40w light bulb at this setting), whereas my iMac goes from bright to very very bright

[greenwizard88]

Kay. Lets start from the beginning. Battery are generally x-cell, xxwatt-hours. The battery in my Dell is a 6-cell, 48WHr battery. The more Whr's, the more electrons the battery can supply per hour (the more power the laptop can use). The most cells, the more electron storage. If you have a 90Whr battery in a laptop designed for 1/2 that, it'll use power 1/2 as fast, and last 2x as long. Conversly, if your laptop is a huge power guzzling monster with a 48whr battery, it'll use power 2x as fast as you would expect.

Now that that's out of the way... Most laptops come with a 48whr battery. More espensice laptops have 6 or 8 cells, cheaper ones have 3 or 4 cells. Also, more expensive laptops will have a higher watt-hour rating. Macs, for example, have a 60whr battery, so a 6-cell battery in your mac will last longer than a 6-cell battery in my Dell.

So there's 2 methods of making a laptop battery last longer. One is to reduce the draw that the laptop takes (reduce the watt-hour). The other is to increase the length of time each cell can run for. Increasing the runtime of a cell is impossible, short of turning your computer off, so we're left to reduce the power draw.

Each component uses a certain amount of power. Your CPU probably uses around 18 watts of power at max, but maybe just 5 watts at idle. your hard drive uses a few watts, your screen uses a few watts, etc... Every time you use your computer for something intensive, it draws more power from your battery. Likewise, the brighter your screen is, the more power it uses. Every time you read/write from the hard drive, it uses more power. every time you use a flash drive plugged into your USB port it's drawing a little power.

So to maximize battery life, simply minimize usage. Turn the screen brightness all the way down, close any running programs (your goal is to reduce the memory footprint so that you use less of your swap-file and keep more in memory), and avoid things that use your CPU a lot, like flash. You can also go into your power preferences and set it to power-saver, which will optimize Windows to conserve power usage.

A new battery will last you around 3 hours, minimum. If you aren't getting that, look at your computer specs, and try to see what sort of battery do you have. Is it a 4-cell, 48whr battery? Because if it is, that will get significantly less runtime than a 6-cell, 60whr battery. The CPU and HDD in a $3000 Macbook Pro are near identical to your $400 Dell, but with a 60whr battery from a MBP powering your Dell, you'd end up with 8 hour runtime.

that's how batteries work. If your battery has over 300 cycles on it (charge/discharges) it will also lose capacity and you might want to replace it. If it's a $300 PC, you might want to see if your battery is low-capacity and upgrade it. Otherwise the tips I suggested earlier should help you get 4+ hours of runtime on your computer.