I talked a while back about some issues around battery life, but recently a co-worker set me a really interest set of factoids about power management I thought I’d share with you..

 

  • There are no “miracles cures” on horizon for the issue of battery life. Fuel cells, although an exciting technology, are probably 5+ years away. It is pretty much up to the platform to extend battery life--and this includes software. (see http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1772287,00.asp )

  • Intel is very active in evangelizing power management techniques for software applications and has some great content available (http://www.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/dc/centrino/power/index.htm.).

  • Microsoft is investing is ramping up engineering efforts around power management. XP exposed functionality for power management: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dntablet/html/MobPCPowMng.asp. Vista ups the ante in that it will make extensive use of sleep and resume for both desktop and laptop machines.

  • Power management has a compelling up-side in terms of TCO. Internal research at Microsoft has shown that a power managed desktop could save on the order of $40/year. For a 30,000 seat organization, that amounts to annual savings of approximately $1.2M—a very attractive proposition for a large enterprise.

 

Check out this session at the PDC:

 

FUN319: “Windows Vista: Developing Power-Aware Applications”

Description: Industry forecasts predict that up to 67% of workforce computers will be mobile PCs. In addition, desktop PCs running Windows Vista will also use CPU power management to help enterprises save millions of dollars per year in energy costs. Your customers will therefore demand that you optimize your applications for power awareness. Discover the updates to the power APIs, the new sleep/wake states, and other improvements in Windows Vista that can to make your application the premier in its class. We cover best practices for power management, including how to integrate your application with system power policy and behaviors. We also show you how to register for and properly respond to common power management events, such as monitor on/off and user presence.