21. Sony Power Manager: Complete Control Over Power Management

The best energy saving functions do no good when they're hard to find or use. Thus, Sony made them simple and all-encompassing, by integrating three customized Vaio power schemas into the standard Windows collection. A separate tool named Vaio Power Management is also provided, to specify individual settings for any and all of these three custom schemes. It's accessible through a button in the Power Option Properties Control Panel utility that Windows XP provides, once the Vaio tool is successfully installed and activated. Users can also simply turn to the Vaio Control Centerto gain direct and immediate access to this power management toolset.

Simply put, with this tool, an informed user can control the energy consumption of every laptop component.

The Vaio Control Center brings all of the installation settings together in one place, making them easier to find.

Sony turns off the DVD drive in all three of these power schemes, and the fan can provide optimal cooling thanks to adaptive management of the laptop. As soon as the Eject button on the drive is touched, however, the DVD drive "wakes up" in all three schemas, ready for use.

All thee Vaio Power Schemes help extend battery lifetime.

The three individual schemes may be further described as follows:

Optimized: A standard setting that the CPU uses to vary its clock rate dynamically, in response to system demand and activity. Maximum Battery: The CPU clock rate is limited to a maximum of 600 MHz. Ultimate Battery: The display is set to 16 bit color mode, and the i.LINK port is turned off.

The following table details how individual settings vary for each of these power schemes:

VAIO Power Schemes - AC Power mode
Options	Optimized	Maximum Battery	Ultimate Battery
LCD Brightness	No Change	Level 9 (light)	Level 5
LCD Powersaving	OFF	OFF	OFF
Color quality	32 bit	32 bit	16 bit
CPU Control	Adaptive	Adaptive	Adaptive
CPU Fan Control	Level 5 (performance)	Level 5 (performance)	Level 5 (performance)
i.LINK Port	Enable	Enable	Enable
Optical Drive	Enable	Enable	Enable
Built-in Modem	Enable	Enable	Enable
VAIO Power Schemes - Battery mode
Options	Optimized	Maximum Battery	Ultimate Battery
LCD Brightness	No Change	Level 1 (dark)	Level 1 (dark)
LCD Powersaving	ON	ON	ON
Color quality	32 bit	32 bit	16 bit
CPU Control	Adaptive	Battery Life	Battery Life
CPU Fan Control	Level 5 (performance)	Level 5 (performance)	Level 5 (performance)
i.LINK Port	Enable	Enable	Disable
Optical Drive	Disable	Disable	Disable
Built-in Modem	Enable	Enable	Enable

At this point, we'd like to offer our readers and ourselves a brief respite. We'll be back later this week with more about how the Vaio VGN-TX1XP compares to the competition and you'll find out if the unit really runs as long on a single battery charge as Sony claims it does.