Microsoft Engineers Windows 8 Metro for Power Efficiency

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The coolest part of connected standby (unless they have changed it from the build conference) is that the device is in a sleep state, and all updates are done at once. For example, instead of a bunch of different programs constantly turning the device on and off to do updates, Win8 will take that process over and turn on, update everything, and then turn off again, thus keeping the device in a sleep state for longer periods of time and extending battery life.
The metro apps are one area where I am not a huge fan of win8 (I love the rest of it). It is MY personal computer/device, and if I open a program I want it to remain open. If I need to close a program then I want to choose what program to close. It is fine and well to keep everything open 24/7 on a PC with 8+GB of ram, and a completely other issue to run things on a 1-2GB netbook. I understand that future netbooks will have 4-8GB of ram, but win8 is small enough to run on older netbooks just fine, so let me micromanage my memory usage if I want to on such devices!
 
FFS... I WILL NOT BE RUNNING """apps""" on my desktop/laptop, get a smartphone/tablet for that, I'm very happy with the way my current desktop GUI looks like and don't need to "re-define" it, and I know that I'm not alone by far.
 
Interesting feature; but the user should have a say if the App goes to suspend mode or continues to work in the background no matter what type App it is.
 
What could you possibly have minimized other than streaming/updating that you wouldn't want suspended? That makes no sense. I for one wish Apple media threads (quicktime, itunes, etc.) would be suspended automatically when I wasn't using them: talk about memory and CPU hogs.
To all the people that continue to complain about the Metro UI. It's an overlay: they're not taking away your crowded, cluttered desktop. For the times when you just want to check mail, the weather, or switch on some music, you won't have to drop down to the desktop. It's convenient, customizable, and simple: stop making it sound like the world is ending.
As far as 'apps' go: saying you 'don't use apps' is absurd. Windows mail is an app. Spotify is an app. MS Word is an app. In the case of a desktop/netbook, the apps will be in the form of full-sized stand-alone programs. They don't have to be Angry Birds and Farmville. The whole point of an 'app' format is to try to eliminate bulk from over-featured programs. Spotify is really a web browser in a way, optimized and streamlined to just do music. So is a mail client, or an RSS/Twitter feed client.
 
It's power efficient as long as you don't keep it in idle. Few seconds in idle, the CPU usage shoots to 50% on my quad core comp making it to run at highest clock possible. After killing couple of svchost processes only then cpu usage lowers.
I've been using win8 for few months now and I can only say that idling is as heavy on electricity as playing crysis(minus the GPU usage).
 


You need to see what process svchost is actually running in process manager (might have the name wrong but you can look it up on the web. I used to occasionally have one of these run away CPU hogs and I later found it was some HP software from a printer I used to have that would run wild like this. I then set it to not turn this process on and the problem was gone. you probably have a program that for whatever reason is not behaving well (and you probably don't need i).
 


These are svchost local service and svchost netsvcs. I searched on the internet, they say the problem is been there from windows 2000, MS is still reluctant to prevent those processes from going into infinite loop (ie programming failure 101).
Keeping computer in power saver mode doesn't change anything.

Anyway I'll be sticking to win8 in future not because I like it but because I don't have choice. And anyway I know a perfect Metro override so I'm saved.
 
[citation][nom]DEY123[/nom]You need to see what process svchost is actually running in process manager (might have the name wrong but you can look it up on the web. I used to occasionally have one of these run away CPU hogs and I later found it was some HP software from a printer I used to have that would run wild like this. I then set it to not turn this process on and the problem was gone. you probably have a program that for whatever reason is not behaving well (and you probably don't need i).[/citation]

Yep, what Dey says. "Tasklist /svc" will help you out.
 
The Windows 8 Preview I had on my main machine was nice to use. It was very snappy so it was clear they have been working on making Windows more efficient.
 
"I don't like the standby and hibernation crap, I'm going to leave my computer on the whole night just so I can use it a few minutes faster. Screw the electrical bill, I'm not paying for it."

-My sister and her laptop bloated with bloatware
 
[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Of course uTorrent will be running all the time in the background...[/citation]That falls under "defined background activity" of uploading and downloading files. So even a possible future WinRT (Metro) version of uTorrent would be fine. Although since I'll probably be using only x86-64 versions of Win8 for the forseeable future, I will probably just be running the existing uTorrent in the background.
 
[citation][nom]feenyxfire[/nom]What could you possibly have minimized other than streaming/updating that you wouldn't want suspended? That makes no sense.[/citation]

I run 7zip, uTorrent, Skype, my backup program, and maybe some music all in the background while browsing the internet.

Suspending it while minimized essentially removes multi-tasking. Which is a gigantic leap backwards.
 
[citation][nom]john_4[/nom]Now I see why they dumbed down the interface, Direct X is so inefficient requires way to much GPU just to run a nice desktop. This is unlike Open GL that Linux and OS X use, both have nice desktops.[/citation]

You mean like the highly stable Gnome3 3D desktop that keeps my OpenSuse11.4 laptop crashing? That's some high-quality crash right there - no warning or anything. Next time the system starts up, the 3D desktop is deactivated (for good reason) until I reboot without crashing. It's pretty while it works, but it's got stupid quirks that screams,"Unfinished and Unpolished". But hey - you get what you pay for.
 
I'm tired of that pointless hype. Microsoft can always preach the latest version is the best in every aspect but with every single release all that I see is that Windows take up more and more system resources. Let me show a few numbers according to my own experience:

Windows NT 4.0 SP6 (with Active Desktop)
Disk usage: 150MB
RAM usage: 25MB
CPU usage idle (Cyrix 6x86MX PR-200): 0~1%

Windows XP SP3 (no other software installed)
Disk usage: 2GB
RAM usage: 200MB
CPU usage idle (AMD Athlon XP 2800+): 0~2%

Windows 8 Developer Preview (no other software installed)
Disk usage: 8GB
RAM usage: 600MB
CPU usage idle (Intel Core i7-2670): 0~2%
 
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