Windows 7 - Power Plan - Select

You're welcome. I hope it will serve your needs.

now i have another issue, is it possible to link certain actions with a power plan.

for instance, i want to open every program in my system when i use high.
or
i want to close out all my widgets and turn my wallpaper to black when i use low.

something along those lines...

P.S. the shortcuts are pretty good....now if i can just limit the spacing between my icons in my toolbar it would be perfect.

Sorry, but no you will not be able to combine actions like that with these shorcuts.

You might see if using Quick Launch to place whatever shortcuts you like in may be able to help with the spacing issues.

yea....no....i already know about that. i need something that offers the feature available in previous versions of windows. the feature of having additional toolbars on the sides of your screen. the feature where you can just drag a folder and let it go at the edge of the screen and a toolbar magically appears....

...but thanks for the suggestion. if you know if windows has hidden that feature, i must know....the future of my hair not turning gray depends on it...(lol)....

Unfortunately the Desktop Toolbar feature that was in Vista has been removed in Windows 7.

However, the free program Fences (personal use version) may be able to work for this instead.

hmmm....not a big fan of adding another program when it should be native, but i'll check that out...thanks. also, not so keen on stardock either, but it might be because i used a cracked version once...ha...

It's a pretty good program. Please let me know what you thought about it.

Never tried it, but you should be able to make a .bat file with the programs you want to start? (And if they support the close options in command line for closing as well).
Regarding the spacing of the icons:
There is a option to have SMALLER icons on the quick launch or start bar, this also solves partially the spacing issue (If I now could just remember where is have set that...let's see....

Go to:
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Personalization
Go to (on the bottom) to "Window color"
You will get the old "Classic" personalization screen with all the options there (you might find some others things in there that you want to change)
In the drop down under "item" there are several settings for icons and other things to fine tune. Note that not everything always works as you might expect (since they introduced themes... :-(, especially if you don't use a Classic theme, but it might be worth a shot.

Shawn,
Here's how i select/change the active power plan:

WIN + X key combo | Battery status section | choose from drop down box.

Win being the key with the Microsoft flag on top.

I forgot another option for getting to the power plans:
If you use the master control panel, some call it "god mode" you have direct access to the energy options
(create a folder, type any name and than ad this <.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}>
(Only the stuff between the < and >)
Now you get a list of all setting in Windows.

What few people might know:
You can drag and drop any of the settings icons to your desktop or Quick launch area and Windows will create a shortcut for you to exactly that setting :-)

But I really miss the setting which used to be available even for Desktops, that you could simply ask Windows to display the energy icon in the status bar and you could select the power plan with only 1 click.... :-(
I hate it when they dumb down things (what they have done with so many things in Win 7)