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' power settings. You can access those settings in this manner:
- Display the Control Panel.
- At the left side of the screen click the Hardware and Sound heading. Windows displays the Hardware and Sound screen.
- Under the category of Power Options, click the Change Power-Saving Settings option. Windows 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 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 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.
- Power Saver. This plan works great for laptop and mobile systems. It turns the display off after 5 minutes and puts the computer to sleep after 15.
- 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.

This tip (10716) applies to Windows 7 and 10.
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...
Don't Update Links to Other Programs
If you have links in your workbook to data in other workbooks, you may want to control whether Excel updates those links ...
Discover More
Creating a Dated Backup File
As you are developing your workbooks, you might want a way to automatically create backup files that include a date and ...
Discover More
Double-Spacing Your Document
Need to produce a quick double-spaced printout of your document? You can do it by using the simple steps in this tip.
Discover More
Adjusting the Cursor Blink Rate
In Windows, the cursor indicates where you are about to type information using the keyboard. You can adjust how quickly ...
Discover More
Using Powercfg to List Your Existing Power Schemes
Windows allows you to define different power schemes that control how your computer uses power. This tip shows you how to ...
Discover More
Quickly Reset Your Graphics Driver
Resetting your graphics driver can help when your computer is facing issues. Execute a quick rest of your computer's ...
Discover More
Comments