Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Commercial, Freeware
SetPower - time-based power management
by Jason Clarke Sep 16th 2009 at 12:00PM
SetPower is a utility that lets you choose different power management profiles for your computer based on the time of day. So, if you want your computer to stay on during the day, but sleep overnight, that's not something you can do with the built-in power management functionality in Windows. SetPower adds the ability to control which profile is in effect at a given time.
As the world becomes more environmentally conscious, the benefits of putting your computer to sleep when you might otherwise be inclined to leave it running are obvious. In fact, SetPower claims that you could save up to $10 per month simply by putting your computer to sleep overnight.
One of my pet peeves about software is that developers tend not to pay attention to whether the machine is running on battery power or not. This is particularly troublesome with software that runs jobs like indexing your hard drive, which can take a long time and keep your CPU running at a higher level then it otherwise would. That drains your battery when the software could very simply notice that the machine is on battery power, and wait until it is plugged in again. SetPower pays attention to the battery state, and can alter the machine's power management behavior depending on whether it is plugged in or not.
SetPower is free for home use, and an enterprise license is available at a reasonable $5 per machine.
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I warn you, if you read on, this might turn into more than just a mere ten-minute time-waster.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Peter said 12:37PM on 9-16-2009
How is this any better than just configuring the built in power management to put the machine to sleep after some period of inactivity?
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bbalmer said 3:27PM on 9-16-2009
The idea is that you can schedule when the machine can go to sleep and cannot. Most folks get annoyed when their machine constantly falls asleep when they leave for a bit and come back to their desk, therefore people disable it and end up sucking down a lot of extra juice.
Peter said 3:43PM on 9-16-2009
If they can't be bothered to adjust their built in power management settings to something more acceptable, then I doubt they would take the time to install and configure this.
Anon said 5:10AM on 9-18-2009
I find this very useful. I hate having to continually set the monitor to turn off at night so I can sleep and then re configuring it in the morning so it doesn't turn off during the day.
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PC-VIP said 11:34AM on 9-18-2009
An Interesting Idea, but:
. . . since (almost) everyone already has some sort of power-save enabled in their computer based on idle time (umm . . . like "at night"), this looks like a way to muck up your system with something that is for all practical purposes useless.
Says me.
Jeff Yablon
President & CEO
Answer Guy and Virtual VIP Computer Care, Business Coaching and Virtual Assistant Services
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