Windows 8 Is Even More Energy Efficient

Over on Microsoft’s latest post at Building Windows 8, Pat Stemen has addressed the topic of power management in Windows 8. Windows 7 was a real leap forward for Microsoft in terms of power management. It was widely claimed that just by upgrading to Windows 7, users saw in increase in the battery life of their devices and it was widely advertised that simply upgrading systems to Windows 7 would greatly decrease energy bills for large corporations.

Microsoft of course are looking to continue this trend and reduce power consumption even further with Windows 8. One of the biggest problems with running a full blown OS on small portable devices like tablets is that they use up a lot of resources and need much larger batteries, which not only makes them more expensive, but also thicker and heavier.

But now that Microsoft are looking to finally make an impact in the tablet market, it’s crucial that they make their new OS as energy efficient as possible. While the type of hardware you’re running has a lot to do with how efficient it is, the software is largely responsible for ensuring that it makes the best use of the hardware, but at the same time using as little power as possible.

Very small changes done well in Windows can result in very large positive environmental impact because of our scale. In many markets around the world, increasing electricity consumption is putting more demand on every aspect of the workplace to reduce power consumption. PCs are a significant source of potential savings

According to Microsoft, Windows 8 has been designed with 3 main energy goals:

1. Aim for power efficiency on all platforms, laptops, netbooks, desktops and of course tablets. If you’re doing some heavy gaming or just causally browsing the web, the same power management features will be present.

2. Improve battery life. Because Windows 7 offered such a significant saving on the battery side of things, the aim here is to try and keep it at that, but at the same time add in all the new features of Windows 8. Microsoft has to be careful with the automatic updating apps and tiles which are  running a lot of the time, pulling in updates.

3. Apply the smartphone power model to PCs and laptops. Currently smartphones and tablets are all able to instantly switch between low and high power modes in a split second. Microsoft wants to do this with Windows 8 as well, and this has already been demonstrated to us.

Another key item to saving power is the new revamped task manager. It manages apps much more effectively now and lets you see what is running and what’s draining power from your device. It ensures that the metro apps retreat into the background when they are not needed so as to reserve power.

Of course we only expect it from Microsoft to improve power usage with every new OS that they release. But I think it’s more important than ever with Windows 8, especially if Microsoft want to get it out on tablets.

Source:

Building Windows 8

View the original article here