More and more people are getting conscious about global warming and how they can help this planet by cutting out emissions and reducing their carbon fingerprint. One important step in this fight is to reduce your energy consupmtion everyday. One way to achieve this is by reducing power utilized by your computer. Although Windows has in-built power management functions, but you can use free SmartPower to configure Windows so that you can save power and money in a much more efficient way.
SmartPower is a Windows application that claims to save energy by hibernating and resuming your PC according to configurable rules. It is well suited for personal home computers as well as servers. SmartPower allows you to create rules to prevent hibernation, suspension or shutting down of your computer. If it sees no rules are currently in effect, then it initiates the hibernation process and this way saves energy.
You can download it from the Ignatu website. The downloaded file is a zipped installer and is around 330 kilobytes. After the installation, you can start SmartPower from its Start Menu shortcut. In the SmartPower Configuration window you can set rules for hibernation. For example, hibernate when network traffic goes down a preset threshold value etc. Actually, the rules are for keeping your system up and preventing the hibernation. SmartPower’s goal is to monitor when these rules are not active or not in effect and then initiate the shutdown.
Here is a list of some of the rules that can prevent your computer from hibernating:
- One of the schedules (a time period during which your PC must stay on) is active.
- There has been recent user activity (no input from keyboard or mouse).
- Any of the devices are online which can be anything from a router to a remote storage device.
- Network traffic on your NIC card is above a preset threshold.
- CPU usage is above a set threshold.
- Some processes (programs) are running.
You can configure what SmartPower is going to do when these rules are not in effect by selecting an item from the target power state drop-down list on the top. The target power state can be either hibernate, shutdown or suspend. The grace period is the time during which if any rules become effective, then the SmartPower will abort switching to preset power state. You can also disable SmartPower altogether by unchecking on the Enable SmartPower checkbox at the bottom-left corner of the window.
SmartPower enhances the hibernation function of the Windows computer by adding so many more rules to it. It aims to shutdown, suspend or hibernate your PC if none of the rules are in-effect. For example, you can use this excellent tool to automatically power off your PC when a download is finished. This tool is very flexible and can be used for many different users for their various kinds of power saving requirements.
You can download SmartPower from : http://ignatu.co.uk/SmartPower.aspx.