In This Chapter
Understanding power management Choosing a power management plan Gauging modem speed Using a dialup modem
‘m a big fan of leftovers. For some reason, my mom’s goulash was much better the second night. And who doesn’t live for the remnants of Thanksgiving Day dinner? Well, maybe not after three days, but you have to admit that there’s good value in having leftovers.
The PC has a lot of hardware guts, most of which you can merrily skip over in your efforts to become comfortable with a computer. Two items among those digital leftovers are worth a good look. The first is the PC’s Power Management system, and the second is the dialup modem. Both hardware goodies are covered in this chapter.
Manage the PC’s Power
I’m certain that somewhere down deep in its core, your computer secretly wants to control the world. But that’s not the type of power this chapter is talking about. Nope, it’s the power that the computer consumes, and literally sucks from the wall socket. Electricity. Juice. You must properly manage that power so that your computer doesn’t waste energy.
Power management is a general term used to describe the ability of computers and other appliances, such as television sets and teleportation pods, to become energy-smart.
It’s power management hardware that enables a computer to turn itself off.
Power management also gives your PC the ability to sleep or hibernate. Refer to Chapter 4.
If you’re really into saving the planet, be sure to properly dispose of old computer parts. Never just toss out a PC, a monitor, or especially a battery. Try to find a place that recycles old technology. (There be gold in them thar consoles!)
The current power management standard is the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI). It specifies various ways the PC can reduce power consumption, including placing the microprocessor in low-power mode, disabling the monitor, halting the hard drives (which normally spin all the time), managing battery power in a laptop, as well as other more technical and trivial methods.
Choosing a power-management plan
Windows hides its power management settings in the Power Options window, shown in Figure 14-1. To display that window, open the Control Panel, click the Hardware and Sound heading, and then click the Power Options heading.
Figure 14-1:
The Power Options window.
The Power Options window features various plans for managing the power in your PC, as listed in Table 14-1. You can see more plans by clicking the downward-pointing arrow button to the right of the text Show Additional Plans.
Each plan controls two parts of the computer’s power management scheme:
The amount of time to wait before Windows automatically turns off the monitor
The amount of time to wait before Windows puts the computer to sleep
Time is tracked based on your input. So when you don’t type on the keyboard or move the mouse for the given length of time, Windows turns off the monitor or puts the computer to sleep. That saves energy.
To choose a plan, select the radio button next to the plan name. The Power Saver option is just fine for most folks. Close the Power Options window and you’re done.
You can also customize any plan, or create your own plan by clicking the link Create a Power Plan on the left side of the Power Options window. Follow the directions on the screen. Be sure to give your power plan a clever name, such as Plan, which is ideal when your name happens to be .
Power management doesn’t turn off the monitor; it merely suspends the video signal to the monitor. An energy-smart monitor detects the lack of signal and then automatically enters a low-power state. This state is often indicated by the monitor’s power lamp, which dims, glows another color, or blinks while the monitor is in power-saving mode.
See Chapter 4 for more information on Sleep mode.
Adding a hibernation option
Windows has never put the option to hibernate your PC in an obvious place. Because of that, my advice for putting the computer into Hibernation mode is to assign the hibernation command to the console’s power button. Here’s what to do:
1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Choose Hardware and Sound.
3. Beneath the Power Options heading, choose the line Change What the Power Buttons Do.
4. From the menu button by the option titled When I Press the Power Button, choose Hibernate.
5. Click the Save Changes button.
6. Close the Control Panel window.
After following these steps, pressing the console’s power button hibernates the computer.
See Chapter 4 for more information on the PC hibernation.
Power-saving options for battery-powered PCs
If you have a laptop or are using a desktop PC with a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and the UPS is connected to the PC by a USB cable, the power-plan settings information you see in the Edit Plan Settings window sports two columns of options rather than one: The first column is labeled On Battery; the second is labeled Plugged In.
You set the options for the On Battery column for when your laptop is being powered by its batteries or when a desktop PC is powered by a UPS during a power outage.
You set the options for the Plugged In column for when the computer is using power from the wall socket. That’s the only power settings column that appears (untitled) when you have a PC that doesn’t have a battery or battery-backed-up power source.
Obviously, you want more power savings when your PC is running on batteries. For a laptop, changing the display and sleep values to something quick, but not too short, makes sense. For a PC running on a UPS, my advice is to “sleep” the computer as soon as possible: Set the timeout values to 1 or 2 minutes.
When your desktop PC is running “on battery,” the power is off and the only thing running the PC is the UPS. That doesn’t mean you can still work; it means that you should turn off the PC immediately. By setting the PC sleep time to less than a few minutes, you help your computer survive the power outage.
Also see Chapter 4 for more information on UPSs.
For more information on using your laptop and managing its battery life, see my topic Laptops For topic .
Merry Modems
Modem is a combination of two technical and cumbersome words, modulator and demodulator. Beyond that, what a modem does is way too technical for me to bore you with now. Suffice it to say, modems are all about communications, primarily between your own PC and a remote computer or the Internet.
There are two main types of computer modem: the fast broadband modem and the traditional, slow dialup modem.
See Chapter 15 for information on broadband modems, which are part of the bigger arena of computer networking.
Modem speed
The gauge used to judge a modem is its speed, measured in kilobits per second (Kbps), or thousands of bits per second. A typical dialup modem runs at about 55 Kbps, which is fast enough to transmit a page of text in less than a second.
Broadband modems operate much faster than dialup modems. Their speeds are measured in Kbps and also in Mbps, which is millions of bits per second. For example, a DSL broadband modem running at 768 Kbps can display all the text from one of Shakespeare’s plays in less than a second. A 2 Mbps modem allows you to receive, in a few seconds, everything Shakespeare ever wrote.
Modem speed is relative; the advertised speed for a modem doesn’t guarantee that all communications take place at that speed.
Some broadband Internet companies may offer minimum speed guarantees — at a premium price.
You can gauge your modem speed online by visiting a site such as www. dslreports.com/stest.
The dialup modem
The traditional PC modem is the dialup modem, which uses the telephone system for communications. Essentially, a dialup modem serves as your computer’s phone, though the phone calls are made to other computers (and fax machines), not to people.
The modem connects to a standard telephone jack, just like a regular phone. Indeed, with a modem in your computer, you’re using the telephone system to place calls, though noisy data is being sent, not the dulcet tones of human communication.
If your PC has a modem, it shows up as a device in Windows. Choose the command Devices and Printers from the Start button menu to see its icon. If you don’t see a modem icon in that window, your PC doesn’t have a dialup modem installed or attached.
Most PCs sold today don’t come with modems, even as part of the chipset. You can add a modem internally with an expansion card, or externally with a USB modem. Even then, unless your area utterly lacks a broadband Internet connection, there’s no need to have a dialup modem in your PC.
Well, there’s one exception: Dialup modems can be used on your PC to send faxes.
The main reason that dialup modems aren’t as popular as they once were: They’re slow. ‘Nuff said.
As with a phone, you must hang up a dialup modem when you finish making the call.
There’s no extra cost for using a modem on a standard phone line. When the modem makes a long distance call, you pay the same rates as for a voice call.
You can’t use your phone while your modem is talking. In fact, if somebody picks up another extension on that line, it garbles the signal and may lose your connection — not to mention that the human hears a horrid screeching sound.
