RSS/ATOMPower Management in Windows Vista
By sblackb • Feb 18th, 2008 • Category: Energy Savings, The Energy ProjectIt seems like power management on the home computer is a hot topic these days, so after several questions regarding settings, I thought I’d share my whole power management plan.
Currently I’m running Microsoft Vista Home Premium. One of the great debates right now is why to switch from XP to Vista, but if power management is one of your goals, you may want to take a closer look. Vista offer more granular control over you power settings, however, it still leaves me with a wish list of features for the next generation operating system. For example…
Why can’t an OS maker create a power management strategy that incorporates a timer? I used to think it had to do with the application that I left open and how to handle saving the documents gracefully. But now ”Windows Update” manages to save in place the open applications and documents so it can perform it’s updates. After reboot and login, the system resumes each of the applications and reopens the files that I forgot to save. So why can’t the power management tools be smart enough to shut down my computer at 11:00pm and resume the session at 5:000 am? This would save 6 hours worth of power, or as we learned in “Make your Computer more Eco Friendly,“ approximately 269 kilowatt hours per year.
I could go on, but until we have enough momentum to move Redmond towards more power sensible solutions, I will simply share with you the power plan that I have enacted on my home computer.
Understanding Windows Vista Power Management
Windows Vista will trick you if you aren’t paying attention. The interface and features are so dumbed-down that anything worth looking at is under an advanced tab. From the control Panel, Select System and Maintenance and then Power Options. From here you can select one of several power management options. My came with the standard high performance setting checked which means use as much power as possible.
So the first thing I did was create a custom plan. This plan was quite moderate in the power restrictions as I wanted to get a sense of the computer’s performance. Being lazy, I left the naming convention of My Custom Plan 2. There is a power savings mode that would throw all settings into power saving mode, but I didn’t necessarily want my desktop to operate like my laptop. This meant creating a custom plan.
At first glance, it would appear that you can only control when the display blanking and sleep modes are invoked, but if you look closely, there is a “Change Advanced Power Settings” option. Click it, you won’t be sorry.
Windows Vista Advanced Power Settings
Advanced Power setting means that you get to see all the controls that would overwhelm a 5 year old. Here is where you control your USB power, PCI display setting, and even the minimum power of the CPU. Let’s face it, most people are not using even half of their CPU’s power. This setting allows you to set a minimum CPU power setting for those days where you are surfing RSS, but not opening Photoshop.
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Windows Vista - Factory Setting These setting are the factory default in my computer. As you can see, there is no love lost for power conservation. |
Windows Vista - Conservative Power Savings This was my first approach at power management. The areas highlighted in yellow indicate the differences between the base and new schemes. |
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Current Power Management Scheme
The following is an example of my current power management scheme. The jury is still out, but so far I feel pretty good about my settings. If your system ever has stability problems, the short monitor blanking duration will make your heart stop for the first couple days as it fades to black. A quick wiggle of the mouse and all is well again. It’s debatable whether the PCI and USB setting really do enough to matter, but I guess these small changes hammer home the point of this site; most simply, that every little action matters.
Related Articles:
- Cutting Energy Consumption and those Power Bills
- Make your Computer more Eco Friendly
- Solana Generating Station - Solar Steam Power
- Passive Solar: How to save big when Installing Solar Panels.
sblackb is Scott and Liz share a passion for the outdoors and want to help protect the natural beauty of our planet. Scott feels like one of the best ways to accomplish this is to take on responsible power use, generation and learning new methods for better living with less resources.
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