To change the power plan on a PC
1. Press 
+X, or right-click, the lower-left corner of your display, and select the Control Panel command.
2. On the Control Panel home page, click the System and Security link and then the Power Options link to view the Power Options control panel .
The Power Options control panel is where you select a power plan or create a custom one.
3. Select one of the three plans: Balanced, Power Saver, or High Performance.
or
Click the Create a power plan link to open a wizard that sets the amount of time before your screen dims and turns off and your system goes to sleep.
You can apply settings to each of the plans.
You may notice that Windows 8 PCs have a
Power menu containing Sleep, Shut Down, and Restart commands. Gone from
the menu is the hibernation feature, where memory contents are written
to disk before shutting down and are read when starting up. You can
change what the Power button does and restore the Hibernate command to
its menu in the Power Options control panel.
To change the Power button’s action
1. Click the Choose what the power buttons do link in the Power Options control panel to view the System Settings control panel .
Use the System Settings control panel to control what the Power and Sleep buttons do.
2. Select a function for the Power button and the Sleep button from the two drop-down lists.
For a mobile device, you will want to
keep the time it takes to dim the screen or put the device to sleep
relatively short, and to use the Power Saver plan. For a laptop, you
will see options for what happens when you close the lid .
To restore the Hibernate option to the Power menu
Select the Hibernate check box in the System Settings panel .
The Power menu will now include the Hibernate command .
The Power menu showing the Hibernate command
Tip
New mobile devices that come with
hard drives benefit from the fastest sleep times you can live with. On
a solid-state device, the component that draws the most power is the
display—minimize its dimming time to get the most battery life.
