What are Power Management Features and How to Use them in Windows 7

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Today there are many factors that contribute to energy efficiency. The ultimate goal is to reduce energy costs. The factors that drive up energy costs include hard drive operations, monitors, the CPU, the motherboard, and any external devices attached to the computer.

Idle Resource Utilization

Reducing idle power consumption can be achieved by reducing the resource utilization of the system when it is idle. It can also be achieved by enabling the hardware to go into lower power states during long periods of inactivity. Greater idle efficiency is accomplished by reducing and sometimes even eliminating background activity on the system.

Trigger Start Services

Upon startup, many services are launched and wait for an event to occur which will then use the service. Windows 7 reduces background activities by using a trigger starting mechanism which will initiate a background service only when it is needed.

Enhanced Processor Power Management

Driver support is included in Windows7 which enables processor power management, or PPM. These PPM technologies allow the OS to chose the right processor performance by looking at the load and adjusting the power consumption accordingly.

Timer Coalescing

To put a processor into idle time and then fire it back up because of software usage may result in more power consumption than is saved. To solve this problem, timer coalesing features involving software management are used.This allows the kernel to combine software timer expirations on the same timer interrupt. Thus idle time is more properly managed, and a true savings is gained.

Device Power Management

Low power modes are available across different technologies including Network card and optical – video components.

How to Use Windows 7 Power Management Features

Click Start

Click the Start Button

Select the Control Panel

Select the Control Panel and select System and Security

Next Select System and Security

Now select Power Options

Power Options

Select A Power Plan

There are three kinds of power plans, Balanced, Power Saver, and High Performance, the last is normally hidden.

Balanced: This plan offers full performance when it is triggered and it will save power during periods of inactivity. This is the preferred plan.

Power saver: This plan is designed to save power by reducing system performance and screen brightness. This plan is designed to offer laptop users the most power from a single battery charge.

High performance: This plan maximizes screen brightness and might increase the computer’s performance in some circumstances. This plan uses a lot more energy and will reduce the amount of time that a laptop battery lasts between charges.

Balanced Power Plan

The Power Saver Plan looks like this:

The Power Saver Plan

The High Performance plan looks like this:

The High Performance Plan

Create a Power Plan

If the previous plans were not good enough, or did not meet your expectation, then you can create your own custom plan.

Create A Customized Power Plan

These power plans are easy to implement, and depending on your use of a computer system or laptop, they can be made to fit your unit and extend its power life.