Basically every laptop I’ve owned I’ve had to disable sleep when the lid is closed as I often leave them plugged in and want background tasks like downloads or updates to be able to run while I’m not using the machine. However, I don’t think PC laptops have a way to switch to a super low power state and just run background tasks like downloads, alarms and notifications or running scheduled tasks without just being left on in regular power mode. Why is this not just a default feature of laptops, given that phones and tablets have been doing this kind of thing for the last decade or more?
Does anyone know if there are plans to make power management for laptops allow for running certain tasks in Windows or Linux in the future? My smug Apple using friend tells me his Macbook already does this, but is the lack of this feature on PCs software related or something innate to x86 vs ARM architecture?
They do have these states.
I thought most Linux distros support this out of the box?
What you’re describing exists, just not for what you’re trying to do with it.
(sO) modern standby has your box sit there in low power mode waking up occasionally to check for updates.
I’ve attached one of my mesh central power logs from a laptop that’s allowed to run s0.
But you can’t use it for torrent downloads and user apps. Even if it allowed you to try it wouldn’t work, s0 doesn’t save any power while the updates are installing They still need all the power to do the install and handle the crypto. They just shut back down when they’re done which isn’t how torrent clients work
Microsoft has been trying to tackle that bear for years. In some cases, making sure to pull your power for a minute before you close the lid seems to solve the issue. Supposedly s0 is supposed to be nixed if you’re on battery, but the code that checks battery doesn’t always get called from s0.
Maybe this will change in the future now that new laptop processors has “little” E cores like mobile phones?
From that perspective we’re already seeing substantial advantages coming from the new hardware on the market. They’re lowering the TDP of the entire processor to save power. He used to burn 50 or 60 Watts just to run some torrents now It’s nothing to have a laptop running on 15 or 20 Watts near idle.
Your power savings don’t need to come from sleep they can just come from more efficient operation. Peer to peer has always been hard to make efficient.
You are a crazy edge case and very few people want that option.
