With Windows 8’s increasing focus on mobile devices, a lot of development work has gone into ensuring that:
• The system boots faster and more efficiently
• Applications use less power when they run
• Applications run in the background only when they are performing a task you started before you switched away
• Apps consume as few resources as possible when they aren’t displayed and active
This last improvement is particularly true of
the tile-based apps and makes it unnecessary (as a general rule) to
close these apps when you aren’t using them. That will take some
getting used to for many of us.
Most of these improvements aren’t in the
user’s control because they are built into Windows 8’s internals. But
you certainly will recognize the changes, because your laptop, tablet,
and phone will be more responsive and have longer battery life.
On solid-state devices, you will find that
after the screen dims and turns off, the system falls into a type of
sleep called “connected standby,” where Desktop apps are suspended but
tile-based apps continue to run in a low-power mode. For PCs, all apps
are suspended when the system goes to sleep .
Depending on the device hardware, Windows 8 will power down and suspend
all apps or power down and leave the tile-based apps in a quiescent
state.
Some processes have to stay active in the background:
• Music players
• File downloads
• Refreshing Live Tiles on the Start screen
• Background printing
• Receiving an IM (instant message), a VOIP (Voice over IP) call, or an email
• Sharing content, such as uploading photos to Facebook
• Synchronizing content with a tethered device (tethered devices are connected by a short-distance connection like Bluetooth)
Windows 8’s new touch interface has few
controls that let you manage power settings; it is expected that
equipment manufacturers of cell phones and Windows RT tablets will
optimize those settings for you. However, if you are working with
Windows 8 on a system with the Desktop, you have a number of power
consumption settings available to you through the Power Options and
System Settings control panels.
To change the power plan on a battery-powered device
Click the battery icon in the Notification area, and select either the Balanced or High Performance plan .
Changing the power consumption plan
Desktop PCs don’t have a battery
icon, so to choose a plan on a PC you will have to open the Power
Options control panel. You can get there from the More power options link or by following the procedure in the next section.
