Gamers Corner

Microsoft has announced that the upcoming Xbox Dashboard update will be hitting Xbox Live on August 11. The update is set to include many new features, including Games on Demand, improved Netflix performance (along with Movie Parties), Avatar Awardables, Avatar Marketplace, the ability to rate games, new Friends list sorting options and more. The announcement also mentions that previously announced features like Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm support is slated to arrive this fall.

Also, Microsoft is currently accepting entrants for an upcoming preview, allowing many gamers a chance to check out the update before it’s available to the general public

• Use a pair of headphones instead of the laptop’s speakers, because these ones consume much more current
• Select an adequate energy conservation profile in Windows
• Decrease screen’s luminosity as much as possible
• Disable radio controllers that you don’t need. Ex: WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G
• Disable ports you don’t need. Ex: serial/parallel port, Firewire port, fingerprint reader
• Turn off the software that you don’t use
• Don’t run software that intensively uses the notebook’s components. Ex: games, unpacker, audio/video convertors, web-pages with lots of flashes
• Don’t use the peripherals such as :USB mouse, external hard-disks, USB sticks, Express Cards and any other type of peripheral
• Use the latest versions of drivers for your system. These ones bring, besides additional functions and optimizations for the existing ones, especially current consumption
• If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, a very good method of increasing the autonomy is to disable window animation at minimization/maximization, to disable transparency effects and also to disable the Aero interface