Changing Windows 8 power plans

Some basic steps to change Windows 8 Power plans

Changing Windows 8 power plan and its related settings can be very effective in ensuring you system is running well yet still saving you money with excess power usage. Here are a few steps to help with selecting a power plan in Windows. Windows 8 may seem very strange at first but all the settings are there “Somewhere” and almost all are only a quick search charm away.

Top Tip: The easiest way to get what you need in windows 8, is the search charm.

To select an appropriate power plan for your laptop or PC,

• At the Start screen, type power options to open the Search charm.
• Select Power Options in the Search results.
• In the Select a power plan window, select the power plan you wish to use
• Close the Select a power plan window.

A power plan is a collection of hardware and system settings that manage how your computer uses power. You can use power plans to cut the amount of power your computer uses, maximize performance, or balance the two. Windows has 3 different preconfigured power plans to choose from.

Balanced (recommended) – Automatically balances performance with energy consumption.
Power saver – Saves power by reducing system performance.
High performance – maximizes system performance and responsiveness.

Changing a default Windows 8 power plan

Note: Some branded Laptops like, Lenovo, HP or Dell may have slightly adjusted versions of these plans so always try and select the brand specific plan if its available.

You can also dig a bit deeper and actually change specific settings in any of the default power plans. To change power plan settings,

• At the Start screen, type power options to open the Search charm.
• Select Power Options in the Search results.
• Click Change plan settings next to the plan that you want to change.
• On the Change settings for the plan window, choose the display and sleep settings that you want to use.

To go into a granular level and be able to configure down to device type in the same windows click Change advanced power settings. On the Advanced settings tab, expand the category that you want to customize, expand each setting that you want to change, and then choose the values that you want to use. When done, click OK, and then click Save changes.