Do you sleep, standby or hibernate? Part II

Now that we have covered the various power settings in Windows, we will go over changing the power settings on your machine. These settings are for Windows 7, but I will include information about Vista and XP.  

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Go to the Start Menu, and type in "Power Options".  Under the Control Panel, you should see "Change power-saving settings".

Most likely the Recommended Settings are in bold (ticked). Now you can tweak these settings by clicking the light blue "Change plan settings on the right of the Recommended Settings.

Now you can set the amount of time you wish to have before the system turns off the display and how long before it puts the machine "to sleep".

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 Other settings found on the Power Plan Page can be seen on the left side, including requiring a password upon waking up recommended if you have sensitive information and saved passwords on your computer. You can also change what the power button on the screen does when you press it.



On Vista, many of the features are similar. There are three preset choices in Vista, balanced, power saver and high performance. In earlier versions of Windows, the power settings were called power schemes.  Now you can make adjustments to fit your personal computer habits.  Happy Computing! ☺