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Background option for Windows 7, due for an October 22 release.

October 6, 2009

Can Windows 7 boost your computer power savings?

Blaine Kyllo
For bchydro.com

Computers have made many aspects of our lives simpler and in most cases more productive, but if there's one problematic category for computer it would be energy efficiency. A recent New York Times article reported that consumer electronics represent 15% of household power demand, and that Americans have 25 consumer electronics products in their households today. In 1980 that number was three.

David Rogers, the information technology advisor for BC Hydro Power Smart says that while more devices means more electricity being used, that also means there are greater opportunities to save power. Technological improvements in recent years have been changing the power consumption of our computerized devices, though, causing them to sip, not suck.

Rogers said that Energy Star approved computer systems can consume up to 50% less power than other computers. The processors and other components that make up our computers are becoming smaller every day, and have been better designed so as to use less electricity. And the batteries in our notebook computers can hold a charge longer then ever before, and have an increased life span.

The software that runs our computers is also being developed to make the ubiquitous machines more energy efficient. Eliot Katz, the senior product manager for Microsoft Canada's Windows client, said in an interview that improving the ability of the Microsoft operating system to manage power consumption was a priority in the creation of Windows 7. The new operating system for PC computers will be released on October 22.

After Windows Vista hit shelves early in 2007, Zerofootprint, a Toronto firm that helps businesses reduce their environmental impact, calculated the energy savings that would result from users switching from Windows XP to Vista. They determined that if 10% of the 22 million PCs in Canada upgraded to Vista, 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide would be saved, equivalent, they said, to taking 6,500 cars off the road.

On the phone from his office in metro Toronto, Katz said that Windows 7 further improved on the benefits that were brought about by Vista.

Going to sleep

Behind the scenes, he said, Windows 7 takes advantage of the capabilities of newer processors to operate in different power states depending on what's going on with the computer itself. "That allows you to reduce power consumption and helps lower energy costs," Katz said.

One critical thing, Katz said, that Windows 7 does better than Vista, is that "it more reliably goes into sleep mode and comes out of sleep mode more quickly." Sleep mode is when the computer, in its entirety, goes into a low power consumption state. The computer is still turned on and operating information is stored in "active memory" so you can be back up and working within seconds.

The default behaviour for computers running XP was to never sleep. With Vista, and now Windows 7, the default is for the operating system to send computers to sleep if they've been idle for 10 minutes. A quick poke at the power button or opening the lid of a notebook and in moments the computer returns to the state it was in before sleep.

Of course, computers in sleep mode still consume a small amount of energy, so users who don't plan to use the computer for a length of time should power them down completely. But if you've stepped away from your desk to trade stories around the water cooler, your computer will have a nap while you're gone, and will save power too.

Screen brightness is reduced

Windows 7 is able to handle displays better than previous versions of Vista with a new feature called "adaptive display mode". If you stop using your computer for a couple of minutes the screen dims so that it is using less power. You can still see what's on the screen, Katz explained, but because the brightness has been reduced, the display draws less energy.

If the computer continues to be idle, the screen enters a stand-by mode, which uses even less power. This all happens prior to the entire computer going to sleep.

The enterprise effect

Katz, whose focus is on the corporate side of the business, said that "whenever we talk to a mid-size or large organization, energy conservation for lots of different reasons are very top of mind."

In their "Canadian power consumption and management study", Info-Tech Research Group concluded that, "Canadian businesses can save up to $11 per system per year by switching to Windows Vista... For a company with 5,000 users, this means up to $47,000 of bottom line dollars can be saved."

Even smaller companies with 250 computers can save about $2,300 a year.

And corporations running Windows 7 can realize even greater benefits because it greatly expands the control that company IT departments have over how the computers used by staff. "A lot of focus has been put onto making Windows 7 an operating system that, if an organization deploys it, will really help them be more energy efficient," said Katz.

Through the use of a Windows term called "Group Policies", a corporation's IT team can implement, company-wide, an organizational policy about energy usage. They can set all computers to go to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, for example. Or have the screens of call-centre staff to dim using the adaptive display mode so employees can still see the information on their screen while they're on a phone call but not actually interacting with their computer system.

A great deal of effort, Katz explained, "has been put into making Windows 7 an operating system that, if an organization deploys it, will really help them be more energy efficient."

BC Hydro's Rogers said that in addition to operating system solutions, organizations can benefit from separate power management software solutions which "will significantly reduce the power consumption of a computer system", and, by extension, a computer network.

He said the B.C. provincial government implemented software that saved 10 million kilowatt hours, enough energy to power 1,000 B.C. homes for a year.

"Every energy savings translates immediately to dollar savings," said Rogers. "Not only do you save energy, but you save money at the same time."

Blaine Kyllo is a Vancouver-based freelance writer and regular contributor to BC Hydro's My Generation youth section.