Download New Windows 7 Power Management Whitepaper

There is a new Windows 7 BETA power management whitepaper available.  Key points from the whitepaper include:

• Improved idle efficiency - Windows 7 reduces resource utilisation when the system is idle and reduces or eliminates background activity on the system.
• Timer Coalescing - for background activity that cannot be reduced, Windows 7 has been modified to defer then execute non-critical background activity at once.  It also defers non-critical background activity when on battery power.
• Trigger start services - when your computer boots it loads a number of system services in the background.  In Windows 7 these services will now use ‘trigger start’ i.e. they require a physical event to occur before the service is started.
• Enhancing power processing management (PPM) - driver support for latest PPM technologies.
• Device power management - added the following low power enhancements:

Adaptive Display Brightness : dims the display after a period of time

Low Power Audio : support for latest Intel HD Audio low power specification

Bluetooth : “selective suspend� mode added

Networking

• Disconnecting the network cable = automatically goes into low power state & vice-versa
• Improved wireless low power mode configurable with group policy

• User Experience - includes enhancements including improved power troubleshooting and improved low battery alerting.
• Enterprise Power Management - more granular control integrated, including:

Event Tracing & power request inspection
integrated into powercfg.exe with HTML based reports

Group Policy

• more granular control of the new features like Device Power Management (table above)
• plus you can now use Group Policy Preferences as well as enforcement to provide more choice

New WMI power provider: allows Powershell 2.0 scripting of power data & settings

Power Policies :additional power policies built-in

• Diagnostics in-the-box - the Windows Performance Toolkit helps IT Pros diagnose issues associated with power management.