Power management improvements

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Power management improvements [Copy link]

As Paul described in his article Windows Vista Beta 1 vs. Mac OS X "Tiger" (Part 2), there are not many differences in power management between Windows and OS X. Each system has its own unique features. OS X supports an instant sleep mode, XP supports sleep, which writes the data in RAM to the hard disk and reads it when waking up. Sleep also significantly speeds up the boot process.

In Vista, Microsoft tried to compromise and provide users with the best possible power management experience. In fact, Vista combines the above two functions into one. When you close the lid of the laptop, it will enter the sleep state. If the machine has not resumed activity for a period of time, the sleep state will be triggered, and the data in the memory will be written to the hard disk for later use when it is resumed.

If you open a Vista-based machine from hibernation, it will instantly come back to where it was, just like a Mac, but if it went to sleep, it will behave like a typical Windows machine today, booting up like normal and offering up any applications you had open.

"We're moving Vista's on/off switch to a one-touch control," Boettcher said. "In Vista, the default shutdown mode is hibernation, which provides fast response time to save power." Of course, you can change it to your will.

What it doesn't like, Paul said, is that Microsoft put power management and on/off states in the Start menu. Experienced Windows users know that using the Win key + U + H keys will immediately enter hibernation mode, which is a feature that current XP-based laptops have. In Vista, these keys will not work because of the new live search box. If you use these keys, the input "UH" will enter the search box. Now, in order to trigger power management or shut down the computer, you must use the mouse. Although there is a dedicated power button (to start the hibernation and sleep scheme), if you want to do other things, such as restart, shut down, log off, etc., you must trigger the submenu of the lock button.

There is one problem. The new hibernate-sleep mode does not work on Paul's test machine. It works on the Dell Latitude D810, and you can use the system hardware power to switch to this new state. But on Paul's machine, a ThinkPad T43, hibernate mode does not work. Once you hibernate, you will not wake up again. You must physically shut down (hold the power button for a few seconds) and then restart. Whatever, it is a beta test version after all...