2. Remove Background Services

The more work a CPU has to perform, the more power it needs to use. Background processes may go largely unnoticed by us, but the system resources they consume still take some share of run-time and battery power. What we can't help notice is a gradual performance decline that occurs as increasing numbers of services are invoked at startup, many of which may go largely unused.

Any unneeded services can be shut down and turned off through the Services control panel. The shortest path to this dialog is through Start > Run, then type services.msc in the Open: textbox and press the Enter key. Each service is listed in the right window pane with a brief description, startup type (manual, automatic or disabled) along with the credentials each service uses during operation. To stop a service, highlight the entry with your mouse and right-click to bring up a context menu where you can stop any running service (Status = "Started"). To disable it permanently (preventing it from restarting after a reboot) right-click on the selected entry to bring up its service properties dialog and specify the Startup type: as either Manual or Disabled. See the following for an example.

Be forewarned: though deactivating a service may seem harmless, it may in fact be important to proper system operation. When in doubt, leave a service running until you can make absolutely sure it will not impact usability. Check these service recommendations at Smallvoid.com for information on common services that it's okay for you to deactivate (you can zero in on this information quickly by selecting the operating system you use (we chose Windows XP) and clicking "Show Trimmed Changes" in the Select recommendations pull-down menu.

On our notebook, a few noteworthy services are generally safe to deactivate: Error Reporting Service, IPSec services (used for VPN, unnecessary on this notebook) and especially Fast User Switching Compatibility since there is only one primary user anyway. Depending upon your personal usage patterns, Telephony, Terminal Services, and Print Spooler may also be candidates for deactivation. There are many other suitable application-specific third-party services that appear on a case-by-case basis, such as Symantec's Event Manager and Network Drivers Service. Beware: these changes can have adverse effects but most of what you do here can be easily undone.