power_report
Have you ever wondered why your computer gets such poor battery life? The Windows 7 engineers were apparently wanting to know the same thing and designed a very cool new feature into Windows 7. The best part about PowerCfg is that it not has the capability to change power settings but it can also review your current settings. It first observes the computer in action, and then create a report for you to view and see whats dragging the system down.
To use PowerCfg open an elevated command prompt (Right click on the shortcut and select “Run As Administrator”): Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt
Navigate to the System32 directory: CD C:\Windows\System32
Enter the command to generate the report: powercfg.exe -energy -output C:\EnergyReport.html
It will take a little over a minute to generate the report, after which you can then open up My Computer and go to your C:\ drive and open the html document labeled EnergyReport. Depending on the state of your computer the report can be pretty lengthy but there are enough details to help you adjust the computers power settings to get the most out of your computer.
Said,
Hey, that’s a pretty cool tool, I especially like the portion where it nails down which drivers and applications are hitting the system up for availability requests. Something like this would have been tremendously helpful during Vista’s early years when people where having all that trouble with their machines refusing to go into screensaver or sleep.