Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Aerofoil reduces your computer’s power consumption when it is running on battery. It does this by automatically switching off some features, like the Aero glass interface, Windows sidebar, muting the sound etc. when your notebook is running on battery.

It can also switch across different Windows power plans, enabling one power plan when plugged in and a different one when running on battery.

The Aerofoil icon in the system tray also provides a very quick and easy way to toggle the Windows Aero Glass interface on and off, useful for conserving CPU resources if and when you need to.

Manages your computer’s power plans

You can have different power plans for when your notebook is running on battery and when it’s not. There are many advanced power settings that apply universally, yet Windows only ask you about power saving features like sleep, hibernation, monitor “on time” etc. With Aerofoil you get the best of both worlds.

Windows Aero Glass interface

It might not be a big surprise to learn that Aero, takes a lot of resources. By turning Aero Off when you are on battery – you get more power to the important tasks. Something that might be of interest to you is that, if you ever need to disable the Aero (for what ever reason) you can do so by right clicking the Aerofoil traybar icon. Even if you are not running on battery.

Lightweight

Aerofoil is so-called passive, and hardly ever takes up more than 1 MB of RAM.

All services optional

The good news is that, despite it’s “taking charge” approach, the program is versatile enough to let you – stay in charge. You can choose which action to take, and which to not.

Reviews and tests have shown aerofoil to extend your battery time by as much as 25%. Want to dispute that ? Try it for yourself and find out.

Aerofoil extends Vista and Windows 7 notebook battery life by:

• Allowing you to manually disable Aero Glass.
• Optionally managing Aero Glass user interface.
• Optionally managing sound muting.
• Optionally managing your chosen power plans.
• Optionally managing Windows Sidebar.
• Optionally showing a quick hibernate button.
• Changing icon colour to show whether on battery or AC.
• Aerofoil is 100% unmanaged C++ (no .Net Framework!).
• Available in both 64 bit (x64) and regular 32 bit (x86) builds.
• No configuration file – everything is customised with the installer.
• Open source and free – no expiry date, download and compile it for yourself if you prefer

Error on first startup

If you were wondering why I didn’t give this more than 4 stars, here’s why. They developers have not implemented the Redistributable C++ file, which most of us need to run the software. Instead, those of us getting a DLL error upon first startup need to download the right file ourselves.

This could’ve been added to the installer as an option – making it even easier to set up. Other than that – give it a go!

Read more about it here, or…

64-bit

32-bit

C++ Runtime 64-bit

C++ Runtime 32-bit

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