Any folks here use Power Plan Assistant (Powerplan 7) for windows power management on their Mac? Any thoughts about effectiveness and safety regarding this download? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
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Any Power Plan Assistant Users?
- Thread starter Wicker Mac
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I originally installed Power Plan Assistant on my mid-2009 13" MBP because it allowed me to disable the keyboard backlighting in Windows 7 x64. Now that the new models have arrived there is no longer a need for this feature, since my 2010 13" MBP allows me to turn off the keyboard backlighting completely using the function keys.
However, a number of improvements have been made to the program which allow users to fully control their power options in Windows from one utility. You can, for example, disable both bluetooth and wireless from the taskbar icon to converve battery power. However, I've had problems saving my settings; whenever Windows restarts, the keyboard backlighting control is disabled even though I've not selected this option. I also receive error messages upon restarting that the program conflicts with Boot Camp. It also requires a startup registry entry. For these reasons I'm no longer using it, but if these bugs are solved (there are frequent updates) I would welcome having this handy tool.
However, a number of improvements have been made to the program which allow users to fully control their power options in Windows from one utility. You can, for example, disable both bluetooth and wireless from the taskbar icon to converve battery power. However, I've had problems saving my settings; whenever Windows restarts, the keyboard backlighting control is disabled even though I've not selected this option. I also receive error messages upon restarting that the program conflicts with Boot Camp. It also requires a startup registry entry. For these reasons I'm no longer using it, but if these bugs are solved (there are frequent updates) I would welcome having this handy tool.
It's pretty bad
- it screwed up my system so that random services would not start upon reboot
- sometimes app windows became persistent and was impossible to get rid of them (!??!)
- minor issue but still: on restart the setting to hide some notification icons was disabled so they were all shown. I set them back to hiding but it would be the same on reboot. The third time it would remember.
I installed PPA as a prerequisite for Trackpad++ so not sure which one messed up my system but it was probably PPA with it's driver signing requirement.
Also the author was unresponsive and disappeared from the email discussion after I started asking about the above issues.
- it screwed up my system so that random services would not start upon reboot
- sometimes app windows became persistent and was impossible to get rid of them (!??!)
- minor issue but still: on restart the setting to hide some notification icons was disabled so they were all shown. I set them back to hiding but it would be the same on reboot. The third time it would remember.
I installed PPA as a prerequisite for Trackpad++ so not sure which one messed up my system but it was probably PPA with it's driver signing requirement.
Also the author was unresponsive and disappeared from the email discussion after I started asking about the above issues.
my 5c 
Can't imagine my bootcamp work w/o powerplan. Yep it's the coolest power icon replacemenrt ever seen and it really takes care of the keyb backlight **** and bluetooth-wifi toggling. using it and T++ for long long time w/o any glitches. and I too contacted its author once and then again recently, never seen better and faster support. yep I kinda advocate now , and yep that's because I love both tools T++ and PPA and it's imho impossible to use bootcamp for work w/o them. Regards.
Can't imagine my bootcamp work w/o powerplan. Yep it's the coolest power icon replacemenrt ever seen and it really takes care of the keyb backlight **** and bluetooth-wifi toggling. using it and T++ for long long time w/o any glitches. and I too contacted its author once and then again recently, never seen better and faster support. yep I kinda advocate now , and yep that's because I love both tools T++ and PPA and it's imho impossible to use bootcamp for work w/o them. Regards.