Conserving energy and reducing your impact on the environment is a very wise practice these days. The new Windows 7 operating system can help you conserve energy and increase your computer's battery life at home, in the office, and on the go. This can also be very useful for your personal laptop in the unfortunate event of a power outage.

If you follow the steps below, you can minimize energy use and increase your battery time.

1. On your Desktop, click on the Start button / Windows logo on the bottom left corner of your screen.
2. In the search window, type cmd but do not press Enter.
3. When you see the cmd icon appear in the results window, right-click the icon and select "Run as administrator."
4. Windows 7 will ask you if you would like to make changes on your computer. Click Yes.
5. The command prompt will appear on your screen. Once this window appears, type in this script:

powercfg.exe /energy /output "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\Energy Report.html"

6. If entered correctly, the program will run a 60-second observation of your computer system's behavior and will generate an energy report that will be saved to your Desktop.
7. Open this file labeled Energy Report found on your Desktop.
8. You will see a detailed report of errors and discrepancies that were observed by this program. From this report you can make a general understanding of what must be done to your computer system in order to conserve energy as you see fit.

This program will highlight areas of your personal computer system that can be adjusted for better energy consumption. Some of the recommended changes advised by this program may require some technical skill because you cannot change them automatically, but if you are the "Do it yourself type" you can be on your way to conserving precious energy. Most results have reported on average of an extra hour in laptop battery life.