I have written an
article a few days ago about the problem that the Vista Aero theme was consuming a lot of power which reduced battery life on notebooks by a measurable amount. One of my suggestions back then was to disable the Aero theme completely which is not really practicable if you want to work with Aero whenever the notebook is connected to a power source.
The software
Vista Laptop Battery Saver (which I found at
Windows Vista Tweaks) automates the process for us. The memory resident software waits in the background and reacts when the notebook is changing into battery mode. It will disable the Windows Vista Aero theme completely which means that you can work longer in battery mode.
It will also recognize when a power source is connected to the notebook and turn on the Aero theme automatically. This is probably the best solution if you want to work with Aero when you have a power source connected to your notebook. I decided to get rid of Aero completely and work with a custom theme which does not consume that much power.
Windows Vista Notebook Battery Saver