Love this PDF? Add it to your Reading List! 4 joliprint.com/mag

batteryfast.co.uk

Microsoft Suspends Background Windows 8 Apps to Increase Batteries Life

Microsoft Suspends Background Windows 8 Apps to Increase Batteries Life

CloudTags: Microsoft , Windows 8 , Apps , Battery Life , Asus A2 Batteries , Asus A2000 Battery life , A22-p701 Battery

Microsoft has announced it will suspend Windows 8 apps that are not visible onscreen its Metro user interface to boost battery life.

The Redmond-based company’s upcoming Windows 8 OS will have to build upon a power efficient system, especially when most developers and manufactu-rers plan to place the operating system on tablets.

With that in mind, Microsoft intends to create Win-dows 8 apps that do not dissipate the juice out of the battery if these are only running in the background.

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system will need to work on providing good battery life, as many system builders intend to put the heavyweight operating system on tablets. To help matters, Micro-soft claimed its goal is to make Windows 8 Metro

applications that are not visible on screen not use any battery power.

According to Microsoft, Windows 8 will bring im-provements to background code execution, which Microsoft claims will minimise impact on battery life while maintaining multitasking. Microsoft has created new application programming interfaces for background processing, which the firm claims will be able to provide the multi-tasking abilities that users expect but minimise battery drain.

Based on the company’s statement, Windows 8 is set to enhance code execution of background ap-plications, which allegedly will reduce the rate of power consumption while keeping the multitasking function in hand.

“Minimizing the power consumption of your PC while maximizing the responsiveness and utility (making it “fast and fluid”), is a significant enginee-ring challenge,” said Sharif Farag and Ben Srour, Lead Program Managers on the Fundamentals and User Experience teams of Microsoft, respectively.

“While it starts with the work we do in Windows to provide support for the right level resource usage, this work requires developers to take resource uti-lization into account as they develop their apps.”

Microsoft built a new set of APIs (application pro-gramming interfaces) dedicated to background processes that will give multitasking abilities for users to minimize power consumption.

Both managers said that the company’s aim is to get the processor into much lower power states for

February 14, 2012

http

://w

ww

.bat

tery

fast

.co.

uk/b

atte

ry-te

chno

logy

/mic

roso

ft-su

spen

ds-b

ackg

roun

d-w

indo

ws-

8-ap

ps-to

-incr

ease

-bat

teri

es-li

fe/

Page 1

Love this PDF? Add it to your Reading List! 4 joliprint.com/mag

batteryfast.co.uk

Microsoft Suspends Background Windows 8 Apps to Increase Batteries Life

most of the time, which means suspended apps will stack away in cache.

“Power efficiency applies to all form factors and all usage scenarios—using less power is the right thing to do for everyone. This is an area of significant innovation for Windows 8 PCs, and builds on the foundation of the new runtime model in WinRT—it is not the sort of thing you can retrofit onto existing desktop applications while still maintaining func-tionality and compatibility,” they added.

According to Microsoft, the switch for a suspended app happens automatically such that it saves the last state for the next use.

However, not all applications will go to the main me-mory’s cache because of storage space limitations, so the memory manager of Windows 8 will have to choose on sticking seldom-used applications back to the disk, which is likely to be a solid-state disk (SSD) instead of a conventional hard drive for tablets.

Farag and Srour said, “To this end, we have added a new component to Windows 8 called the “Desktop Activity Moderator,” which only runs on these new connected standby-capable platforms. This compo-nent is designed to help reduce the resource utili-zation of desktop apps when the device goes into connected standby. If we allowed apps to continue running unchecked in this low-power mode, the PC would run down the battery more quickly. Instead, we suspend desktop applications, stopping their re-source use and maximizing battery life. From the applications’ perspective, it will appear as if the PC has simply been put to sleep. When the PC is woken from connected standby, the app will resume as if the PC had been woken from a sleep state.”

To maximize the Windows 8 potential, Microsoft needs to find the right tablet makers who can un-leash the full potential of its upcoming OS in order to rival the Apple iPad and Android tablets.

Related Articles:

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered auto-matically to your feed reader.

February 14, 2012

http

://w

ww

.bat

tery

fast

.co.

uk/b

atte

ry-te

chno

logy

/mic

roso

ft-su

spen

ds-b

ackg

roun

d-w

indo

ws-

8-ap

ps-to

-incr

ease

-bat

teri

es-li

fe/

Page 2