If you’re playing music to help you focus while you’re working, you don’t want that getting turned off to save power, but you may not need the scripts on a web page you’re not looking at to keep running in the background. Low Power and Standby (or Screen Off) optimize for lower-power usage, Mixed Reality and Game Mode optimize for sustained performance but they affect all the software and services that are running. There are seven power profiles included with Windows (and you can customise them or create your own with the POWERCFG utility). Windows 8 added a Desktop Activity Moderator that pauses desktop apps and throttles services for third-party apps so they don’t run your battery flat while your PC is in standby, but that doesn’t affect power usage when your PC is on. Universal Windows Platform apps are designed to be suspended without losing data, but most applications aren’t UWP apps. Windows uses logic about what applications you’re using so that background activity doesn’t affect the performance of what you’re doing on your PC, but increasingly it also includes logic to reduce the amount of power the system uses, to increase battery life (or cut your power bill for a desktop PC). SEE: Windows 10: Lists of vocal commands for speech recognition and dictation (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

On Windows, a lot of code can be running in the background to do useful things like checking for malware, indexing files for search, uploading files for cloud sync or downloading and applying updates to reduce the amount of time you spend looking at a Windows Update restart screen. Smartphone OSes are very aggressive about turning the processor off as quickly as possible to save power, often limiting what apps and services can run in the background, or postponing OS maintenance until your device is plugged in and connected to Wi-Fi overnight. One of the differences between desktop and mobile operating systems is how much work goes on in the background. Image: Cienpies Design/Shutterstock Must-read Windows coverageĭefend your network with Microsoft outside-in security services On newer processors, Windows can tune where and how fast code runs for power savings here's where you will see that show up. EcoQoS gives Windows 11 apps better battery life

Microsoft saves battery mode load off