One Quick Trick to Make Windows (Possibly) Faster

A few years ago, I bought a used Dell Latitude E6510 with an Intel Core i7, and 8 GB of RAM with the intention of having a fast laptop. On paper, it sounded like it made sense. However, when I turned on the laptop, it was far from fast. I figured maybe this could be a slow hard drive, which wasn’t helping, but something else was wrong. I was looking around in all the harder-to-find spots to see if something weird was installed, like a bad driver. I then noticed when I hovered over the battery icon that the power setting was set to power saver. I did a quick Google search and found that, yes, that can slow down your computer!

To change this, or to see what your Windows power setting is set to can be found in one of two places. One way is to press Windows key and X. If you’re running Windows 8 or above, a menu will pop up in the bottom left corner, and you’re going to want to press Mobility Center. I believe on Windows 7, pressing Win + X just brings up the Mobility Center, but I don’t have any Windows 7 computers to test this on. There should be a spot in the blocks that allows you to select which power mode you want. Select High Performance, and you should have a noticeable speed increase. The other way to change this setting is in the Power Option in Control Panel, using this path: “Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options.” In the panel, you’ll notice all the power plans to choose from. You can change the power plan by going in the advanced settings, where you’ll notice all the individual parts you can tweak to increase performance, such as Processor Power Management and other graphics card settings you may or may not have.

Hopefully this quick and easy trick works for you. Coupling this with a fast SSD has certainly made all my old laptops run like new again!