Aerofoil 1.5.1 Released (64 and 32 bit builds available)

The award winning Aerofoil has now been updated to 1.5.1!

Aerofoil extends Vista and Windows 7 notebook battery life by:

• Allowing you to manually disable Aero Glass.
• Optionally managing Aero Glass user interface.
• Optionally managing sound muting.
• Optionally managing your chosen power plans.
• Optionally managing Windows Sidebar.
• Optionally showing a quick hibernate button.
• Changing icon colour to show whether on battery or AC.

Benefits over earlier versions and similar software:

• Much more efficient - Aerofoil is 100% unmanaged C++ (no .Net Framework!).
• Available in both 64 bit (x64) and regular 32 bit (x86) builds.
• Much smaller memory use (about 25%-30% of the size of similar software).
• Unlike other apps, Aerofoil doesn't poll battery level continuously allowing the CPU save power by being idle more often.
• No configuration file - everything is customised with the installer.
• Open source and free - no expiry date, adware, spyware or malware, download and compile it for yourself if you prefer*!

What reviewers of Aerofoil have had to say:

"Aerofoil Extends Your Battery Life Approximately 25%", "you really should download"
(netbooknews.com) Disclaimer: Aerofoil's author's (my) personal best has been (only) 10-15%, or ~10 minutes, on a 2 hour battery 17 inch HP notebook (DV9233EU) with power saver mode using the lowest screen brightness.

"Why couldn't Microsoft just make power switching part of the "Designed for Windows 8" spec or buy Aerofoil?"
(Woody Leonhard, Infoworld)

"This is definitely a worth-while little app for road warriors"
(Metro Area Personal Computer Club, Iowa, USA)

"great for gaming and notebook applications alike"
(Official Windows Magazine - 47th of top 100, 37th of top 40 Hot Apps / TechRadar)

"Aerofoil, though, is far, far smaller and more efficient"
(Dave Johnson, Bnet)

The great advantage of AeroFoil is little resource consumption..... works perfectly with Windows 7"
(Kavya, Techno360)

"a must for every Vista laptop user."
(Wim Van Acoleyen, ZDNet)

"Great utility for gamers and laptop users."
(The Glitch)

"simple yet amazingly effective software that the corporate bigwigs couldn't figure out"
(Umar, Techtites)

Changes in 1.5.1:

• Available as a 64 bit (x64) executable.
• Source code updated for the wxWidgets 2.9.0 framework.
• Project updated for Visual Studio 2010.
• Multibyte strings have been removed in favour of Unicode.
• UPX compression has been removed due to lack of a 64 bit Windows packer (memory usage remains the same).

Downloads (please read the important note below too):

Download from Softpedia (external site) (note Softpedia don't host the source code).
Download Aerofoil 1.5.1 (64 bit) Installer
Download Aerofoil 1.5.1 (32 bit) Installer

Download Aerofoil 1.5.1 (64 bit) Source Code (C++)*
Download Aerofoil 1.5.1 (32 bit) Source Code (C++)*

IMPORTANT: If you receive an error message regarding the msvcp100.dll being missing you may also need a Windows update - the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable. You can get this from Microsoft - links below - please choose the correct version:

Redistributable for 64 bit (x64)
Redistributable for 32 bit (x86)

* The source code has dependencies on the wxWidgets framework (2.9.0) and the project is for Visual Studio 2010. For 64 bit compilation wxWidgets will also need building with the WIN64 flag (instead of WIN32) and the project build platform targets set to x64. Additionally an environment variable $(WindowsSdkDirx64) needs to point to the relevant Windows 7.1 SDK.

Aerofoil 1.5.0_03 Out

Again this is another installer fix - perhaps I shouldn't be making code changes after 2.30am and I might make less errors... Thanks to reader Timothy for pointing out another flaw!

There are no other changes to the Aerofoil itself (it still has version 1.5.0 in its About box).

Changes in 1.5.0_03

- Fixed installer to set auto mute option correctly which was always switched on in Aerofoil 1.5.0_02.


Downloads

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_03 Installer

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_03 Source Code (C++)

Aerofoil 1.5.0_02 Out

Sorry all - I rejigged the installer for 1.5.0_01 to change shortcut names and add a reconfiguration option to the Windows start menu and accidentally deleted the line to copy the readme.txt, this fixes that bug :(

Changes in 1.5.0_02

No code changes in this release just an installer bug fix to ensure the readme.txt is copied by the installer (which had caused a broken Windows shortcut icon).

Downloads

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_02 Installer

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_02 Source Code (C++)

Aerofoil 1.5.0_01 Out

UPDATE: Please get the latest (1.5.0_03) version of Aerofoil from here

No changes to Aerofoil, just to its installer (About box in Aerofoil still shows "1.5.0").

Changes for 1.5.0_01:

• Added installer options to add a "Configuration" shortcut to the start menu (configuration shortcut starts a copy of the installer for Aerofoil's reconfiguration).
• Added automatic shutdown of Aerofoil on installer run.

These changes should hopefully deal with the concerns raised about the ease of reconfiguring Aerofoil. :)

If you are upgrading from Aerofoil 1.5.0 it is recommended you uninstall Aerofoil 1.5.0 first.

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_01 Installer

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_01 Source Code (C++)

Softpedia Mirror Now Available

Softpedia has started mirroring some Silent Software that is GPL licenced ...although I didn't actually list some of it!! The following software has been awarded the Softpedia logo shown on this page.

Aerofoil on Softpedia
Image to ZX Spec on Softpedia
Gesture Magic on Softpedia

Please note some of the software available on this blog whilst free to download is NOT GPL (CPL and closed source). I'll be sure in future blog descriptions to make the licence more clear.

The latest versions of the software will always be on this blog first. As the copyright holder the source code (for the GPL and CPL software) will be available here as long as I distribute the binary downloads.

Aerofoil 1.5.0 Released

UPDATE: Aerofoil is now at version 1.5.1.

Original post follows.

The award winning Aerofoil has now been updated to 1.5.0(_03)!
Aerofoil extends Vista and Windows 7 notebook battery life by:

• Allowing you to manually disable Aero Glass.
• Optionally managing Aero Glass user interface.
• Optionally managing sound muting.
• Optionally managing your chosen power plans.
• Optionally managing Windows Sidebar.
• Optionally showing a quick hibernate button.
• Changing icon colour to show your power type.

Benefits over earlier versions and similar software:

• Much more efficient - Aerofoil is 100% unmanaged C++ (no .Net Framework!).
• Much smaller memory use (about 25%-30% of the size of similar software).
• Unlike other apps, Aerofoil doesn't poll battery level continuously allowing the CPU save power by being idle more often.
• UPX compressed meaning Aerofoil.exe is as small as it can be.
• No configuration file - everything is customised with the installer.
• Tried and tested on Windows 7 (thanks to D. Schiferli!)
• Open source and free - no expiry date, adware, spyware or malware, download and compile it for yourself if you prefer*!

What reviewers of Aerofoil have had to say:

"Aerofoil Extends Your Battery Life Approximately 25%", "you really should download"
(netbooknews.com) Disclaimer: Aerofoil's author's (my) personal best has been (only) 10-15%, or ~10 minutes, on a 2 hour battery 17 inch HP notebook (DV9233EU) with power saver mode using the lowest screen brightness.

"This is definitely a worth-while little app for road warriors"
(Metro Area Personal Computer Club, Iowa, USA)

"great for gaming and notebook applications alike"
(Official Windows Magazine - 47th of top 100, 37th of top 40 Hot Apps / TechRadar)

"Aerofoil, though, is far, far smaller and more efficient"
(Dave Johnson, Bnet)

The great advantage of AeroFoil is little resource consumption..... works perfectly with Windows 7"
(Kavya, Techno360)

"a must for every Vista laptop user."
(Wim Van Acoleyen, ZDNet)

"Great utility for gamers and laptop users."
(The Glitch)

"simple yet amazingly effective software that the corporate bigwigs couldn't figure out"
(Umar, Techtites)

Downloads

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_03 Installer

Download Aerofoil 1.5.0_03 Source Code (C++)

If you use Windows Vista and receive the message "Side-by-side configuration is incorrect" you may also need a Vista update - the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable

* Note Aerofoil.exe is compressed using UPX so you will find your compiled executable is larger. You can find UPX here. The source code has dependencies on the WxWidgets framework (2.8.8) and the project is for Visual Studio 2008.

Aerofoil 1.5?

Recently I've also been thinking of improving Aerofoil to include new features that greatly improve battery life for Vista and Windows 7. This is not to say I will produce an Aerofoil 1.5, but more a general gauge of user feedback as to features you'd like to see. With up to 240 unique hits a day on this blog I'm hoping some of you will be able to give me some info on features you think would be worthwhile and would save battery life.

Things I have already tried and dismissed:

Feature	Expected Gain	Dismissed because...
Screen colour reduction (going from 32bit colour - 16.7 million colours to 8 bit colour - 256 colours)	Lower power GPU usage since it is doing less colour work	Tests showed no real gain, possibly a few seconds, but importantly Vista is mostly blacked out and very hard to use
Auto process priority management - lowering task priority for heavy processes	Lower CPU usage should mean greater battery life	Usage of a machine became unbearably slow. Conversely, trying to put the CPU priority up instead so a task was done faster is counter productive, since user input is slow and the application is waiting longer at high priority
Decrease the sound volume	Lower power usage from lower volume	Not much to be gained here unless you play music constantly, and probably quite annoying

Features like hardware disabling I think are overkill and is potentially dangerous so I won't be considering that (e.g. switching Bluetooth off, disabling Bluetooth driver stack). Hardware disabling would also require a lot of manual configuration, and one of the design paradigms behind Aerofoil is to keep it as simple as possible.

So what can I do, how can I improve Aerofoil - I was pretty much resigned to 1.4.5 being the last version - but given it's success I'd like it to become the defacto must have battery saving application for Windows Vista and Windows 7 Notebooks?

Random Developments

A couple of things to mention that don't really warrant their own posts.

Today I got bored of Vampire Castle and took a short break to do some poor box art for the game. The game itself is coming along nicely, as per last post, in addition the game trail is now working and the reels spinning randomly - I'll later amend it so that it runs on a weighted probability e.g. "70% payout".

I also learnt about the "heart beat" function in Windows Vista that may be unnecessarily keeping your hard drive active when it could be idle and turning off/saving notebook battery. Have a look at this Microsoft forum for more info. I've set the value to zero as per the instructions to disable the registry setting and according to Task Manger -> Performance -> Resource Monitor -> Disk Vista is no longer writing a "lastalive" file every few seconds to the hard drive. Whether this will help battery life on a Vista notebook I don't know, but there's been no adverse affects so far.

Aerofoil 1.4.5 and LocateMe 1.0.1 Beta

Aerofoil 1.4.5

- Fixes a small issue with hibernate closing explorer on resume

Download Aerofoil 1.4.5 installer
Download Aerofoil 1.4.5 source

LocateMe 1.0.1 Beta (source only release)

- Basic integrated GPS support (no need for a bluetooth GPS - Satellite View not yet working)
- Refactor of view handling

Download LocateMe 1.0.1 Beta source

Many thanks to Stefan Lembach for providing N95 testing, and Calum for providing an integrated GPS reader class

Aerofoil 47th in Hot 100 Windows Vista Magazine Utilities

IMPORTANT:
This page is just for archive purposes - Aerofoil is now at version 1.5.0 please click this link to get it.


Aerofoil has been rated at 47th out of 100 best software for Windows Vista!
(That's just one behind BBC IPlayer, and ahead of iTunes at 50)

Aerofoil extends your Vista and Windows 7 notebook battery life by

- Allowing you to manually disable Aero Glass.
- Optionally managing Aero Glass user interface.
- Optionally managing the best two power plans.
- Optionally managing Windows Vista Sidebar.
- Optionally showing a quick hibernate button - hibernate and power management were greatly improved in Vista.




Benefits over earlier versions and similar software:

- Much more efficient - Aerofoil is 100% unmanaged C++.
- Much smaller than older versions and other similar software.
- UPX compressed meaning Aerofoil.exe is as small as it can be.
- No configuration file - everything is done with the installer.

Windows 7

Aerofoil has been tested in a Windows 7 virtual environment and no obvious bugs were found. "Windows Gadgets" - "Windows Sidebar" on Vista - seems to be managed correctly - at least started when on AC, as I can't simulate battery power I can't tell if its shut down when on battery. Please also note that if your Windows 7 graphics card driver doesn't support power management then the Aerofoil "Hibernate" menu shortcut won't work.
For most people Aerofoil should work just as well as in Vista, having said that... if you notice any problems with Windows 7 and Aerofoil please report them here since I don't have real hardware to do the testing on!

Downloads

Download Aerofoil 1.4.5 Installer (read the note below!)

If you receive the message "Side-by-side configuration is incorrect" you may also need a Vista update - the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable

If you find your settings are not being saved please read this post (they are saved, this is not a bug)

Download Aerofoil 1.4.5 Source Code (C++)

What's making my hard disk thrash in Windows Vista?

Wondered what is causing your Vista machine's hard disk to thrash at seemingly random times in Vista? Well on a bare clean Vista install here is what is what I believe is causing the usage, and when - use this guide to help diagnose which you have:

Process	Occurs When?
Superfetch/Readyboost	Readyboost device inserted, first run, when Vista analyses that you use particular programs/data regularly.
Indexing service/Windows Search	Assumed after every new file write/delete - reindexing for greater index performance occurs randomly (well, when the index needs cleaning up).
Windows Defender	Periodically in the background, automated scheduled scans.
System Restore	When a new driver or piece of software is installed.

If you have Vista on a laptop and use Readyboost (via built in card reader or similar which I do), I'd recommend leaving Superfetch/Readyboost enabled, and System Restore for obvious reasons. I've disabled Windows Search via the services (because of heavy disk/battery usage) and Windows Defender as I'll enable and use this manually when I need it (I don't need it bugging me every 3 days/running whilst I work).