Screen Brightness Problem

I'm having a problem on my XPS listed below. When I have my adapter plugged in, the screen is bright and everything runs normal, however, when I take my adapter out, the screen becomes significantly darker, and everything runs much slower, especially on a game. I'm fairly new with this system and I'm wondering if my notebook is conserving power, and if there is a way to change this?

 

for brightness: you can adjust the screen brightness on your keyboard (refer to your manual) while on battery to make it brighter..

for performance: you can use NHC to adjust to max performance even on battery

 

Ok, thanks for the info, but what is NHC exactly?

 

Yes, the notebook is preset to darker display and lower performance to extend the running time on battery.

You can change the default CPU power profile under the Power Properties. I use Performance on Demand, but I also use RMclock to undervolt the CPU so that it doesn't use significantly more power when it is running faster (it also reduces heat and fan noise during mains operation).

I would expect that there is an option to change the default display brightness when running on battery. On my old Inspiron 8000 this was in the BIOS, but there may be a Dell power management application.

John

 

Notebook Hardware Control

it has many more benefits...

Look here:

http://www.pbus-167.com/

 

I thank you both for the help.

Edit: I've downloaded NHC and changed the the battery slider under powerMizer to maximum performance, however I still have slow down in games. Is there anything else that I can change, or do games generally have to be run on the adapter?

 

It must not have worked. Check again, or use the power regulation software that came with the laptop from Dell. Most processors slow to around 800 MHz when on DC power.

 

I'm sure that the GPU will also be down-clocking on battery. There will probably be a way to change this through the CPU control panel, but expect your battery life to shrink substantially.

John