As you might have guessed from some of my other posts, I\u2019ve been doing a fair amount of work recently on Windows 7.\u00a0 One thing I\u2019ve been doing a bit of reading about is power management and if\/how Win7 can influence our energy efficiency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like may organisations we\u2019re actively looking at ways to reduce the energy we consume, both in terms of within the work we deliver (i.e. designing buildings for our customers that consume less energy), and also the energy we consume as a company\u00a0in our day to day operations \u2013 of which IT plays a part.<\/p>\n
Having\u00a0dig into it a little, Windows 7 has some interesting capabilities that should help us achieve our green computing objectives by reducing the power consumed by our desktop and laptop computers.\u00a0 There\u2019s some detailed info<\/a> available from Microsoft directly so I won\u2019t talk about it too much, but a few points are worth talking about.<\/p>\n A big part of a computers overall power consumption is the energy it uses when idle \u2013 not least because most computers spend a fair chunck of their lives in that state.\u00a0 If you can’t turn them off or put them to sleep when idle, you should at least try to optimise\u00a0tham a little.\u00a0 Win7 helps by reducing the system resources that are used when idle, and reducing or postponing background tasks until the computer is being actively used.\u00a0 It achieves this partly though increasing the number of background services that are only started when needed, cutting the amount of work Windows asks the computer to do.<\/p>\n In addition to managing core CPU, memory and disk usage, Win7 is also more intelligent about how it manages devices that are attached.\u00a0 Displays, network adapters and Bluetooth radios can be scaled back to reduce power consumption, and in the case of displays Win7 natively supports ambient lighting sensors to optimise the brightness of the screen.<\/p>\n A big advantage for organisations managing a large number of computers is Win7\u2019s improved support for management and diagnostics.\u00a0 Group Policy can be used to set power policies, and a WMI provider allows for better scripting support through PowerShell.\u00a0 This will allow a much more consistent application of power saving features across organisations.<\/p>\n Of course Win7, whilst an improvement, isn\u2019t a sliver bullet that will solve all your problems.\u00a0 There\u2019s still a place for third party tools such as 1E\u2019s NightWatchman.\u00a0<\/p>\n NightWatchman is actually a pretty good product.\u00a0 Not only does it help you to shutdown computers overnight whilst gracefully closing applications etc, the backend components will also help you track benefits across your organisation.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth a look if you\u2019re looking at cutting power consumption, whether for green or financial reasons.<\/p>\n Further info: Microsoft Windows 7 has some interesting capabilities that should help achieve green computing goals by reducing the energy consumption of desktop and laptop computers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[274,173,13,275,179],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-work","tag-1e","tag-environment","tag-microsoft","tag-nightwatchman","tag-windows-7","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n–\u00a0 MS Win7 Power Management White Paper<\/a>
\n– MS Win7 Power Management Webcast<\/a> (it\u2019s level 200 so not too techie)
\n–\u00a0 1E NightWatchman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"