TWEAK YOUR POWER OPTIONS

Let’s be frank, fiddling with the power settings on your PC or laptop is not going to make a world of difference. If you’re running on battery power, the laptop will likely kick into Balanced mode to ensure the battery isn’t hammered, dropping to Battery Saver if the cells are running low. You can fiddle with the slider when you click on the battery icon in the notifications area to fine-tune this, but in our tests it didn’t move the needle in terms of energy consumption.

Either when plugged in or on battery, you can opt for the Power Save mode (Control Panel | Hardware & Sounds | Power Options), which does throttle background processes. However, this can hamper performance if you’re juggling four or five apps, at which point its benefits become questionable: if it’s taking you longer to do work, is it really saving any energy overall at all?

What is more likely to make a small but substantial difference is fiddling with the power options in the main settings menu (search for ‘power’ in the Windows 10 search bar). For example, by default, Windows turns the screen off after five minutes on battery power or ten when plugged in. Why not drop that down to five for both and save that energy every time you nip away from your desk? Likewise, reduce the amount of time it takes to put the computer to sleep from that same menu.

Indeed, just getting into the habit of locking the screen (Windows+L) or shutting the laptop lid when you don’t need the computer for a bit will help. Lots of small savings will eventually add up.