Whether at home or work, computers experience periods of inactivity. To avoid wasting energy during these periods, a computer's operating system can help manage power consumption.

Windows Vista contains a variety of energy saving power management features which provide users and organizations with a customizable and reliable end user experience, and includes:

• Default settings that maximize energy efficiency.
• Reliable power state transitions.
• Seamless, intuitive user interaction with power-management features.
• The ability to switch dynamically between customizable power plans.
• Enterprise-wide control of power management through Windows Group Policy settings.

Power Settings Can Save Energy

With Windows Vista, Information Technology (IT) managers, desktop administrators, and individual users can save energy and improve productivity simultaneously.

For IT managers, the new Windows Vista Group Policy power management settings offer efficiency and allow consistent configuration across an enterprise.

Windows Vista has an improved sleep mode that provides reliable and fast transitions between active and sleeping states. These improvements help users and IT departments strike the right balance between productivity and energy conservation.

Historically, inconsistencies in platform deployments and disabled power-saving settings have been a large source of wasted energy. A recent PC Pro Labs study of 800 office workers in the United Kingdom showed that 25 percent of users leave their computers running all weekend. The study also found that 67 percent of the users left their computers running a screensaver rather than using sleep mode. This usage translates into wasted energy and higher costs, yet is something that can be easily addressed by organizations and computer users.

Take Control

Organizations of all sizes have indicated they need power management and with Windows Vista, Microsoft provides that support. The advanced power management features in Windows Vista enable IT managers to take control of computers to determine the best and most efficient power management settings, and to enforce these settings across an organization.

With Windows Vista, IT administrators can manage more than just Sleep and Hibernate functions. More than 35 power management settings are available, including timeouts for screensavers, monitors, hard disks, sleep mode, and hibernate mode.

Group Policy allows IT managers to define organization-wide policies to control any number of specific settings and put those policies into effect with little effort.

Match Power Plans to Individual Needs

Because people have varying requirements for their computers, Windows Vista provides three distinct power plans out of the box. Each plan offers an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand way to configure power settings based on how you want to use your computer. Each level provides reasonable default settings that reflect the power plan.

• Balanced. Offers full performance when you need it and saves power during periods of inactivity.
• Power saver. Saves power by reducing system performance and helps mobile PC users get the most from a single battery charge.
• High performance. Maximizes system performance and responsiveness. This plan is useful in situations where system performance is paramount to power consumption.

Microsoft recommends the use of the Balanced power plan in most situations, which is the default plan when Windows Vista is installed. The Balanced plan is configured to put the computer to sleep after it has been idle for 60 minutes (15 minutes if running on battery power), although it is possible for system manufacturers and corporate IT departments to create custom images with different values for these and other settings.

A power plan or individual power management settings can be enforced through the use of Group Policy. If a power plan is enforced, the user will not be able to switch between plans. Likewise if an individual setting is enforced, the user will not be able to override the setting. For example, an organization may want to consider enforcing the use of a blank screen saver to prevent the use of energy intensive screen savers.

Reliable Sleep and Faster Resume

The combination of Windows Vista and today's hardware platforms transitions laptops into and out of Sleep mode reliably and with almost instantaneous resume times. By default, simply closing the laptop lid puts the computer to sleep, allowing the user to avoid lengthy shut–down times or Hibernate mode when travelling with the laptop. Windows Vista also makes Sleep mode easily accessible directly from the Start menu, and the laptop's power button can be configured to put the computer to sleep.

Windows Vista offers an enhanced sleep feature designed for desktop computers. The new Hybrid Sleep mode simultaneously preserves data in memory and writes a copy of the memory to the hard disk (as a hibernate file). In the event of a power loss while the computer is sleeping, the system is able to boot using the hibernate file. This allows desktop users to resume more quickly from memory and helps to prevent data loss if there's a power failure.

Laptops, which have their own batteries, are not configured to use Hybrid sleep mode due to the overhead associated with writing the hibernate file before the computer goes to sleep. However, if a low battery condition is reached, the system will automatically wake up and then immediately hibernate.

With energy-efficient features built-in, plus customizable power plans to fit individual and organizational needs, Windows Vista helps you and your organization make less of an impact on the environment.