Windows 8 plans to better manage your battery life

Designing Windows 8 for virtually any device from smartphone to PC, Microsoft says it's had a key goal in mind for all hardware platforms--energy efficiency.

With laptops and mobile devices slurping up battery power and desktops and servers chewing up electricity, Microsoft has wanted to ensure that any device running Windows 8 can tap into better power management.

"Very small changes done well in Windows can result in very large positive environmental impact because of our scale," Pat Stemen, a program manager on Microsoft's Kernel team, said in the latest Building Windows 8 blog. "In many markets around the world, increasing electricity consumption is putting more demand on every aspect of the workplace to reduce power consumption. PCs are a significant source of potential savings."

Software itself can impact power usage, noted Stemen, since the CPU, hard disk, memory, and other components each consume resources. The operating system and drivers also play a role since they manage the hardware.

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