These days, shutting down your computer is a rarity. If you want to save power, but keep your computer ready to turn on, hibernation is an excellent option. I’ll show you how to change power options and why you might want to change the default Start Menu Power options.

I hibernate my laptop which is the most power efficient option available and works closest to turning off the computer completely. Hibernation saves the computer’s current state to disk.  When you start the computer, it returns Windows 7 to the way it was. The load time is much faster too, instead of going through the entire boot process of starting from scratch, you are back at the desktop in no time and operating like you never left.

By default, the Power Option is set to Shut down, to change that follow the instructions below.

Click Start, type: taskbar

Hit Enter on your keyboard

Go to the Start Menu tab, click in the Power button action: list box and choose from one of the available options. Click Apply and OK confirm changes.

From now on you will see only Hibernate or whatever you choose as the default option. You can always go back and change it when you don’t need it.

How to Change the Default Start Menu Power Options (Quick Tip) is a post by Andre from Notebooks.com.

One of the true tests of how well mobile tech works, is how it handles a real world failure. While using the Ford Taurus with Microsoft SYNC technology on our Great American Road Trip 2.0 I had the opportunity to find out how the car, which is as much a computer as a means of transportation, handled a failure caused by user error — a dead battery.

Halfway through our trip when I parked the car late at night I was in a hurry and didn’t realize that I had switched the headlights from auto to always on. I did notice the next morning when I tried to unlock the car by touching the numbers on the door or using the remote and nothing happened. Thankfully the keyfob for the Ford Taurus has a hard key inside it which was able to get us into the car, and eventually the trunk thanks to a fold down backseat, where our jumper cables were.

From there we were able to get a jump from a local couple who happened to be parked nearby. Within a few minutes of hooking up the jumper cables the car was ready to go and to my surprise everything worked perfectly.

The SYNC system remembered our devices and the head unit even remembered the last set of directions we had entered the night before. I was impressed with the ease of essentially restarting the car after an improper shutdown as well as the ease at jump starting the Taurus since it seems newer cars come with the battery covered by brackets or hidden in the trunk.

Hopefully a future SYNC version will offer the option to turn off the headlights with enough juice to start the car one more time or a text message alert when the lights are left on.

For more reviews of Road Trip Gear, check out everything we have on the Great American Road Trip 2.0 and follow the NBRoadTrip tag on Notebooks.com.

Ford SYNC Fails Gracefully is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

If you commonly leave work open on your computer overnight, you’ve no doubt had your computer automatically reboot while you are sleeping and in some cases take your work with it. While most times Windows 7 can re-open your local work without a problem, you can easily lose online work and open webpages. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. This guide will show you how to stop Windows 7 from automatically restarting after installing Windows Updates.

There are two methods, the first involves a registry change and is the best way to disable automatic updates on a Windows 7 Home computer. The second involves changing the group policy on your computer and works on all versions of Windows 7. If you have a version of Windows 7 that supports the second method, try that as it is easier.

For either of these solutions to work you will need to have administrative privileges which most home users will have. Your work PC is another matter, and it may not allow you to make these changes without help from IT.

If you do turn off automatic restarting after updates, you should take care to restart your computer regularly in order to install important fixes and keep your computer up to date.

How to stop Windows 7 Home from Automatically restarting after updates:

Step 1. Click on Start and type “regedit” in the textbox.

Step 2. Press Enter and if prompted, click Yes.

Step 3. In the registry editor find the following folder: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPolicesMicrosoftWindows”

Step 4. Right click on Windows and choose New, then Key.

Step 5. Name the new key “WindowsUpdate” without the quote.

Step 6. Right click on WindowsUpdate and choose New, then Key.

Step 7. Name the new key “AU” without the quotes.

Step 8. In the right section of the Registry Editor, right click and choose New, then “DWORD (32-bit) Value”

Step 9. In the new value area, type or paste the following, “NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers“. Then press Enter.

Step 10. Right click on the NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers entry you just created and choose modify.

Step 11. Type “1″ without the quotes in the Value data: field.

Step 12. Click OK, close the Registry Editor and Restart your computer. You should no longer experience automatic restarts after installing Windows Updates.

How to stop Windows 7 from Automatically restarting after updates with a Group Policy change:

Step 1. Click Start and type “gpedit.msc” without the quotes. Press Enter.

Step 2. Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update

Step 3. Open “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Update installation” by double clicking.

Step 4. When the window opens, click enable and then Apply.

Step 5. Click OK to close the window and then restart your computer.

How to stop Windows from Restarting after Installing Updates is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

I’ve been wishing for this feature for quite some time. You know the routine: your notebook bugs you are needing to be restarted because updates have been installed, or perhaps you just want to restart it because it seems to be running slowly. You hit the restart button and walk away to use the bathroom or make a cup of coffee (knowing that, with many applications, your computer will take several minutes to fully boot up). You expect to leave the room an come back to a freshly restarted notebook (wouldn’t that be convenient?). But alas, when you do return, the computer is waiting for you to enter your password, and won’t really start booting up until you do so. This is such a frustrating process. One shouldn’t need to hold the computer’s hand while it boots up. It is a computer for crying out loud, it should be able to do this stuff automatically. Disabling one’s password isn’t a solution; people usually have passwords on their computers for a reason, whether it be security or privacy, and disabling the password is not an option.

A simple ‘reboot without prompting for password’ option when restarting would be an incredibly simple fix to this annoying issue, and would allow one to restart their notebook, walk away to do something else, then return to a fully booted computer rather than come back, only to be required to enter their password, then wait several more minutes while the computers all the way up” — if you will.

But wouldn’t this sacrifice security? In the unlikely situation that someone steals your computer while it is turned on, couldn’t they use this option to never be prompted for a password? Nope. An easy fix to this potential breach in security is to prompt for the password when the ‘restart without prompting for password on boot’ is selected. This way, the same security is retained by requiring the same credentials, only the order in which the boot/password prompt is rearranged to be more accommodating, when the user so chooses.

I wish that this feature would have been included in Windows 7, its inclusion alone would been a new feature that I’d actually use.

‘Restart Without Prompting for Password on Boot’ Option Would be Awesome is a post by Ben from Notebooks.com.