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I have a very slow Internet connection at home. If I want to download some 1 GB of data from Internet, I usually keep my laptop on for the whole night. I use Flashget as my downloader.

I want to do something by which most of the hardware which is not used, only while downloading is happening, do not consume power. Like for screen I have defined in power plan to go off after 1 min. But I want to conserve more power.

Any ideas how?

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this is not the place to ask this type of question -> superuser.com – Jakub Nov 5 '09 at 14:14
Can't really see where else you'd be saving beyond the screen. Hard-drive, CPU, RAM, networking, motherboard will all still be working if you are downloading. What sort of areas were you expecting to save power here? – Bonus Nov 5 '09 at 14:28
On USB ports, keyboard mouse, Touch pad, DVD Drive, Speakers. On mother board-the area which handles audio input and output, the area which handles display. There can be many things within the system, which I may not be knowing and might be consuming power also when i'm not using its functionality i.e. when I'm only downloading. – iSid Nov 5 '09 at 14:39
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1 Answer

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If your computer supports advanced power management, the Windows power console in the Control Panel (Vista and above only) will let you throttle the CPU down to 5% of max. Also, unplug anything that's connected to the machine that you don't need.

If you want to be extremely aggressive about this, disable hardware you're not using (bluetooth, wifi, webcam, etc) directly in the BIOS to prevent the computer from even powering the devices up.

If you want to go way over the top and shave every last ounce of power savings out of it, pop open the dvd drive to stop Windows from polling it every second, and turn the volume off in Windows (this may or may not shut the speakers off - depends on your laptop).

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Thanks for the reply Danny! I will check windows power console if it allows me to save power on CPU front. I've a button on laptop to switch off blue tooth and wi fi. So I think I don't need to go into BIOS for that. I don't think opening DVD drive will save power. It will only stop windows from polling it. Muting from windows will stop any output to speakers from windows, but I think it won't save power. – iSid Nov 6 '09 at 6:42
Like I said, depends on your laptop. Popping your DVD drive open will save some power (not much mind you). If the OS isn't using (by polling) the drive, like most electrical components, the computer MAY stop sending power to it until it's closed again. If muting your speakers causes your computer to cut power to them, obviously that's some savings, but again, not much. – DannySmurf Nov 6 '09 at 7:15
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