Manage Energy Management

As promised in my last post, here's how you can manage the Lenovo Energy Management. To get to the Lenovo Energy Management page, look for a stylish battery icon (not the simple battery icon that shows the battery status) on the system tray. If you hover your pointer over the icon, it will show "Energy Management - XXX" where XXX is the current power scheme the S10 is using. Click on the icon and the Energy Management page appears.

Here you can see the icons for the four different power schemes pre-set by Lenovo. The icon you see on the system tray will be one of these and it is the scheme that is currently running. In this screen shot, the scheme used is Low Power and this icon will appear in the system tray. Note that the icon for the power scheme currently employed is enclosed within a square.

(Alternatively, you can access this Energy Management page by selecting the Power management options in the Start menu.)

If you want to change the power scheme to a different one, click on the new scheme and the battery icon will light up. Press the apply button to confirm and the new scheme will take effect while the icon will be enclosed in a square and the corresponding new icon will appear in the system tray.

Double click on any of the icons and you will arrive at the Monitor setting page where you can adjust the brightness, when the backlight will turn off and when the monitor will turn off. This can be set separately for using the battery or using the mains (plugged in).

After setting this page to your heart's content, you can then move on to the next tab which is for the system setting. Here you can set the time for standby, hibernation, turning off hard disk and also the CPU level (frequency). Again you can set separately for either running on battery or plugged in.

You can make whatever changes you want but don't forget to press the Apply button to save you changes. If you have messed up the whole thing, don't worry, just press the Default button and you'll be back where you started.

There are other tabs in the Power Management that you can click and make changes but another important one is the Advanced tab. Here you can enable or disable hibernation just like the one in the Windows Power options screen and you can let the system auto adjust to the power scheme according to the battery power or manually select a particular power scheme.

You can select what mode the system will go into when you close the lid or the reaction when you press the power button or the sleep button. If you have disabled hibernation, it will no longer be an option where it will normally appear here or in the system setting page.

A common user complaint is that the screen goes off after 1 minute or 5 minutes while watching video. This happens when the backlight or the monitor itself goes off after the preset time in the Monitor setting. To stay uninterrupted, set the time to NEVER not only in the Monitor setting but also in the System setting. Otherwise your monitor may be set to NEVER off but when the system goes into standby or hibernation, the monitor will go off anyway. Thus the Monitor setting and the System setting must be in sync to get the desired effect.

In case there's problem in the Energy Management, you can go into the Energy Management folder within the Drivers folder in drive D: to reinstall the programme. On the other hand, if you don't like too many options, you can uninstall the Energy Management programme using the Add/Remove function in the Control Panel and restore control using the Windows Power options.

The choice is yours. So don't fret, go out and enjoy your S10!

(Screen shot to show location of the power management icon in the task bar as requested by one of the readers. Should be there somewhere. Yours may look different depending on the power scheme in use.)

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

Losing Sleep over Hibernation?

While checking on the two Lenovo S10 Forums, I found that there are some confusion between the Sleep (or Standby) mode and the Hibernation mode implementation on the S10. This is compounded by the fact that Lenovo has replaced the Windows power management by its own Energy Management.

To see what I mean, get on to the Windows power management page by right clicking on any empty space on the desktop. The Display Properties window will appear as below.

Select the Screen Saver tab and the windows below will appear.

Click on the Power button and the Power Options Properties screen will appear. How MS decide to hide the power management page under the Display Properties is beyond me.

You'll find that all the options are greyed, meaning you cannot make any changes here. To make changes, you have to go to the Lenovo Energy Management window. You can also get to this Windows power options page by going to Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance and then Power Options.

Will your system go to sleep or will it go into hibernation? It all depends on the settings on the Windows Power options or the Lenovo Energy Management. You can prevent your system from going into hibernation by selecting the Advanced tab and unchecking the "Enable hibernation" box. Don't forget to click the Apply button after any changes.

Once you have disabled hibernation and if you check the Power Options page again, you will find that the "System hibernates" line is no longer there, meaning your system will never go into Hibernation but only into Sleep or Standby mode.

What is the difference between the Sleep mode and the Hibernation mode? In simple terms, hibernation is deep sleep. You system will wake up from sleep when you touch the pad, press a key or open the lid (if it's close) but to wake it from hibernation, you MUST press the power on key.

Technically, the system will go into stages of undress, oops, I mean rest - monitor off, hard drive off, etc, based on the settings (timing in the power options above) and when it reaches the stage where only the RAM is still on, it is in sleep mode. Before it goes into hibernation, it will save the contents of the RAM into the Hard drive and the RAM itself will power off. Thus the system draws no power when in hibernation and thus is the mode best for power conservation. And your hard drive must have spare space of at least equal to the size of the RAM so that it can save the contents of the RAM before the system go into hibernation.

By the way, you can move into Hibernation mode quickly by going to the Turn Off Computer page, move the pointer over the Standby button and a dialog box will appear that says "To hibernate instead, hold down the Shift key." That is, if you have enabled hibernation. Thus you can start up you S10 much quicker by going into Hibernation instead of shutting down normally.

My next post will be on the Lenovo Energy Management itself. I need to go into Sleep mode now.

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/