Fujitsu Siemens Computers A3120 manual Power Management, POWER/SUSPEND/RESUME Button, Standby Mode

falcon2.book Page 27 Thursday, December 21, 2006 10:30 AM

Power Management

Your Fujitsu LifeBook notebook has many options and features for conserving battery power. Some of these features are automatic and need no user intervention, such as those for the internal modem. However, others depend on the parameters you set to best suit your oper- ating conditions, such as those for the display bright- ness. Internal power management for your notebook may be controlled from settings made in your operating system, pre-bundled power management application, or from settings made in BIOS setup utility.

Besides the options available for conserving battery power, there are also some things that you can do to prevent your battery from running down as quickly. For example, you can create an appropriate power saving profile, put your notebook into Standby mode when it is not performing an operation, and you can limit the use of high power devices. As with all mobile, battery powered computers, there is a trade-off between performance and power savings.

POWER/SUSPEND/RESUME BUTTON

When your notebook is active, the Power/Suspend/ Resume button can be used to manually put the note- book into Standby mode. Push the Power/Suspend/ Resume button when the notebook is active, but not actively accessing anything, and immediately release the button. The system will enter Standby mode.

If your notebook is suspended, pushing the Power/ Suspend/Resume button returns your notebook to active operation. You can tell whether the system is in standby by looking at the Power indicator. (See Figure 2-3 on page 6) If the indicator is visible and not flashing, your notebook is fully operational. If the indicator is visible and flashing, your notebook is in Standby mode. If the indicator is not visible, the power is off or your notebook is in Hibernation mode. (See Hibernation Feature)

STANDBY MODE

Standby mode in Windows saves the contents of your system memory during periods of inactivity by main- taining power to critical parts. This mode will turn off the CPU, display, hard drive, and all the other internal components except those necessary to maintain system memory and allow for restarting. Your notebook can be put in Standby mode by:

■Pressing the Power/Suspend/Resume button when your system is turned on.

■Selecting Sleep from the Windows Shut Down menu.

■Timing out from lack of activity.

■Allowing the battery to reach the Dead Battery Warning condition.

G e t t i n g S t a r t e d

Your notebook’s system memory typically stores the file on which you are working, open application informa- tion, and any other data required to support operations in progress. When you resume operation from Standby mode, your notebook will return to the point where it left off. You must use the Power/Suspend/Resume button to resume operation, and there must be an adequate power source available, or your notebook will not resume.

■If you are running your notebook on battery power, be aware that the battery continues to discharge while your note- book is in Standby mode, though not as fast as when fully operational.

■Disabling the Power/Suspend/Resume button prevents it from being used to put the notebook into Standby or Hiber- nation (Save-to-Disk) mode. The button resume function cannot be disabled.

■The Standby or Hibernation (Save-to- Disk) mode should not be used with cer- tain PC Cards. Check your PC Card doc- umentation for more information. When PC Cards or external devices are in use, Hibernation (Save-to-Disk) mode cannot return to the exact state prior to suspen- sion, because all of the peripheral devices will be re-initialized when the system restarts.

■If your notebook is actively accessing information when you enter the Standby or Hibernation (Save-to-Disk) mode, changes to open files are not lost. The files are left open and memory is kept active during Standby mode or the memory is transferred to the internal hard drive during Hibernation mode.

The main advantage of using Hibernation (Save-to-Disk) is that power is not required to maintain your data. This is particularly important if you will be leaving your notebook in a suspended state for a prolonged period of time. The drawback of using Hibernation mode is that it lengthens the power down and power up sequences and resets peripheral devices.

HIBERNATION (SAVE-TO-DISK) FEATURE

The Hibernation feature saves your system’s memory contents to the hard drive as a part of the Standby/ Resume mode. You can enable or disable this feature.

Enable or Disable the Hibernation Feature

The default settings are not enabled. To enable or disable the Hibernation feature follow these easy steps:

1. From the Start menu, select Control Panel.

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