Tip #4638 - Vista Energy Saving Features
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Vista
Energy Saving Features
To begin, let's
go over a few basics. Windows Vista is a line of operating systems
developed by Microsoft for use with personal computers, including
home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs and media centers.
Released worldwide on January 30, 2007, Vista contains many changes
and new features over the earlier version of Windows XP. But, most
importantly, it comes with a whole slew of new energy saving features.
So, what do you say we take a look and see what we've got? Let's go!
What
it Means in Plain English
With
Windows Vista, Microsoft planned to put their machines to "sleep"
after an hour of inactivity. While businesses and consumers can change
that setting, computers can nod off on their own if pre-set. Microsoft
estimates that allowing a PC to go to sleep during off hours, as compared
to leaving it on all the time, saves anywhere from $55 to $70 a year,
depending on the type of monitor you use. Wow!
On the other hand,
with Windows XP, programs could veto a user's request for the PC to
go to sleep. In some cases, laptop owners thought they had put their
computer to sleep, only to discover a few hours later that the machine
had remained on and the battery had been drained. By adding the new
sleep option, you can wake up your computer to install security updates,
while letting it remain in the power-saving mode the rest of the time.
Also in Vista,
you can enforce the power management settings through the group policy
tool. All that snoozing time could pay off environmentally as well.
By putting six PCs to sleep, rather than leaving them on all the time,
you can save the same amount of carbon emissions that would otherwise
require an acre of trees to absorb. Only about 10 percent of computers
today have power management features enabled, according to the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
Power
Saving Features
The Windows Vista
operating system features significant changes to power management
infrastructure, functionality and default settings. Those changes
impact how PCs running Microsoft Windows consume energy.
How to
Take Advantage
Keeping with the
theme of making your computer more energy efficient, those of you
who are running Windows Vista can take advantage of many of the new
power saving features that were implemented. For starters, you can
get a software engineer to download a piece of white paper from the
Microsoft Web site here
so that they can configure Windows Vista platforms for maximum energy
efficiency. The techniques on the paper may be used to help extend
mobile PC battery life and reduce energy operation expenses for desktop
and server PCs. The paper also explains how to evaluate system energy
efficiency and it demonstrates example power policy settings to favor
power savings and performance. Here's to saving yourself some energy!
~ Zahid H. Javali
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