SmartPower : Automatically Hibernate Your PC when Idle

It happens all the time that you leave your PC running and get busy doing some other things (like attending to a phone call, watching a TV show or talking to a friend). Leaving your PC powered on for no reason not only wastes the electricity but it also reduces the life of the computer hardware. A freeware tool called SmartPower presents the solution by automatically hibernating your PC when it is idle.

SmartPower detects the idle state of your PC based on many factors, for example, if users are logged in, certain processes are being run, certain devices are powered on, CPU is above certain threshold and more. You can select one or more of these deciding factors to let SmartPower hibernate your PC automatically.

You can download SmartPower from its dedicated website. The download is a very small file of about 2 megabytes. The downloaded file is setup installer using which you can install it on your Windows PC. After the installation, you can open the SmartPower configuration from the Start Menu.

SmartPower : Automatically Hibernate Your PC when Idle

In the configuration, you can choose various factors that control whether your PC should be hibernated or not. The Schedule section allows you to add schedules in which your PC should be in wake-up state. In the Users section, you can choose the duration of time after which users are considered inactive and hibernation is initiated. The Devices section allows you to hibernate if a device is turned off. The Network tab gives you option to hibernate if network traffic drops below a specified value. The CPU section lets you choose if your PC should be hibernated after CPU usage falls below a threshold. Under the Processes tab you can decide to hibernate if a specific process is not active.

SmartPower allows you not only to hibernate but also to suspend, sleep or shutdown your PC based on the same rules. You can select the target PC state from hibernate, suspend or shutdown from the list in the SmartPower configuration. When one of the selected conditions is met (for example, all users become inactive), then SmartPower gives you a grace time of 5 minutes before switching to the target state (hibernating your PC). You can adjust this grace time in the SmartPower configuration tool.

SmartPower is small but very useful tool to automatically hibernate your PC when its not in use. Even if you forget to turn off your PC at home and go somewhere, you do not have to worry. SmartPower will take care of everything. Moreover, it can cut down your electricity bills by switching your PC to a lower power consumption state or shutting it down.

You can download SmartPower from http://getsmartpower.co.uk/ .