One thing I’ve been checking up on is the effect of laptop battery life when using the Aero system, included into the new Vista Operating System (included in all versions except Vista Basic).

On your laptop, one of the most important things to watch is your battery life as it won’t to you a darn bit of good when you’re typing away and your battery dies on you and you realize you forgot to save during the last hour.

The rule of thumb for laptop battery drain is; the more intensive the program on your CPU the more power it drains. So far I’ve found out the drain using Aero is only 1-4%. You can lower this a little and extend the battery time by putting your laptop into power save mode. It doesn’t shut Aero off but does turn off the transparency effects. That should help extend the battery somewhat. The biggest drain however is your screen; the brighter it is the more power it’s sucking down, a good 15-25% of your battery power.

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