Windows Enhances Power Management

Windows power management is becoming more important as customers demand mobile computers with longer battery life and organizations begin to focus on reducing the costs of electricity and cooling for servers and PCs to save money and gain “green” credit. Changes to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will allow these OSs to consume less power than their predecessors, and allow administrators to centrally configure and mandate power management. But optimizing some of these changes requires drivers that completely expose the power management features of processors and other devices, and developers need to be aware of how application design decisions can affect power consumption.

Power-Saving Modes Enhanced

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 inherit improvements that Microsoft has made to power-saving modes such as Sleep and Hibernate in more recent versions of Windows. However, the new OSs also inherit the longstanding dependence on drivers and client or desktop applications that behave in ways that can prevent power-saving modes from working reliably.