Choosing a Power Management Plan
It's obvious that your computer uses power; it has to in order to operate properly. You can, however, minimize the amount of power your computer uses by changing Windows 7's power settings. You can access those settings in this manner:
- Click Start and then click Control Panel. Windows 7 displays the Control Panel.
- At the left side of the screen click the Hardware and Sound heading. Windows 7 displays the Hardware and Sound screen.
- Under the category of Power Options, click the Change Power-Saving Settings option. Windows 7 displays the Power Options screen. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1. The Power Options screen.
- Pick one of the power management plans available on the screen.
Most modern computers allow Windows 7 to control both the computer itself (including the hard drive) and the display monitor. These components can be set to automatically "turn off" after varying amounts of inactivity. Windows 7 offers three power management plans that you can select in step 4:
- Balanced. This is typically the plan recommended for desktop systems. It turns off the display monitor after 10 minutes and puts the computer to sleep after 30.
- High Performance. This plan is designed for systems that may require a lot of unattended computational time, where you don't really want the computer to pause what it is working on. It turns off the display monitor after 20 minutes and never puts the computer to sleep.
- Power Saver. This plan works great for laptop and mobile systems. It turns the display offer after 5 minutes and puts the computer to sleep after 15.
This tip (10716) applies to Windows 7.
Author Bio
Allen Wyatt
With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...
Controlling the Behavior of the Mouse Wheel
The mouse wheel, by default, controls scrolling vertically through your worksheet. If you don't want the wheel to control ...
Discover More
Selecting Columns in VBA when Cells are Merged
If you have a macro that selects different columns in a worksheet while processing information, you may get some ...
Discover More
Spell-Checking in a Protected Worksheet
When you protect a worksheet, you can't use some tools, including the spell-checker. If you want to use it, you must ...
Discover More
Changing the MAC Address for a Network Adapter
MAC addresses are used to uniquely identify devices on your network, such as a network adapter. Here's how you can modify ...
Discover More
Using Powercfg to Change the Active Power Scheme
You can easily change which power scheme is active by using the SetActive switch. This tip shows you how.
Discover More
Connecting to an External Screen
Got a second monitor or projector you want to use with your Windows system? Here's how easy it is to take advantage of ...
Discover More
Comments