LostInTechnology

Analyze and Tune Your Laptop with Notebook Hardware Control

Posted on 28. Dec, 2009 by Sourojit in Software

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Until now, you must have come across many hardware monitoring and tweaking tools, but how many of them were dedicated for your laptops? This might sound strange, but laptops need different treatment as they are not the same as desktops.

Desktop users can go for high performance without worrying much about their power consumption on the other hand laptop users have to keep in mind the battery life and other components that require special attention. Notebook Hardware Control (NHC) serves the purpose of tweaking your laptop to get the most out of it.

Let’s jump right into the features of NHC and what it can tell you about your laptop.

Status

Shows information about CPU clock frequency, CPU speed, tells how much RAM is available, battery charge and life and also calculates CPU and hard disk temperature in real time.  There is also an option to start on screen monitoring to keep track of your current hardware status. Here you can also find out how long your system has been switched on.

Profiles

This option is only available in Professional edition, with the profile editor you can add, move, rename and remove profiles in an easy way. You can set different icons for each profile to differentiate the profiles easily.

Settings

From here, advanced options can be unlocked. These settings sound only be adjusted by advance users. The following settings are unlocked in this menu.

CPU Speed Control

From here, you can change the operating speed of the processor and control Windows power scheme. Schemes provided by NHC are:

• Maximum Performance- CPU works with maximum speed.
• Battery optimized- In this scheme CPU works with minimum speed.
• Maximum battery- CPU works with minimum speed and allows further throttling according to amount of battery life left.
• Dynamic switching- This is an intelligent mode and can automatically switch between maximum and minimum speed according to CPU utilization. It can also be customed and the switching behavior of the CPU can be controlled by specifying minimum and maximum CPU load levels.

CPU Voltage Control

In this section, you can change the default CPU voltage.  Doing this reduces heat dissipation and maximizes battery life. This setting must be carefully configured and tested, else CPU may stop responding in long run.

ACPI Control System

ACPI control system helps in visualizing and controlling LCD brightness, fan speed, WLAN and other ACPI devices. It also allows you to write ACPI Control System classes for your system.

Battery Information

This section shows various information related to the battery status. This information can also be displayed by a small battery icon in the taskbar.

Graphics Card Control

This section allows you to change power options for your graphics card.

Hard Disk Settings

Shows the name of the hard disk manufacturer  and settings  like power consumption , noise and performance can be managed. It uses S.M.A.R.T technology to detect internal state of hard disk. It also notifies you about any critical health problem and prevents loss of data.

Conclusion

If used properly, NHC is a very useful utility that not only helps you in monitoring your laptop hardware but also helps in maximizing battery life and fine tuning other components. It’s a must have for anyone that wants to tweak their laptop’s settings to improve performance.

(By) Sourojit Nandi is a tech blogger from Tech-Compass with an eye for details and features of softwares and web-services. He likes exploring new concepts and software in his free time. He has years of experience in troubleshooting beginner problems in Windows and to him, blogging is an attempt to share this knowledge.

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Tags: free softwares to analyze and tune laptops, laptop maintainance, maximize laptop battery, NHC, notebook hardware control