Power management, driving me nuts!

[cazetoG]

Hi!
I own a Lenovo y50, which I see as one of the more powerful laptops out there.
The problem I have is that I bring it to school everyday, and have to change the powerplan for when I'm at home and at school - usually running on the battery at school.

When it's connected to an AC, like it is at home, I want it to be as powerful as it can, since I'm playing demanding games. When it's on battery I want it to be less powerful for increasing battery life.
But everytime I unplug the AC from the PC I have to manually go in the powerplan and choose the "balanced" setting, and everytime it's plugged in I have to go back to the powerplan options and choose "full performance".

Can anyone tell me that if I run on the "power saver" or "balanced" mode, when I plug in the AC it automatically goes into "full performance" mode? It should be like that, since it's getting power?

On the new windows 10 I have to go through multiple apps just to get to the one I want, like the one there is on windows 8.1

Please, I hope someone is able to help me.

Cheers.

"I know this picture is from 8.1, but it's the same window I use for changing the powerplan options in win 10"

 

[theyeti87]

The single biggest thing you can do to save on battery life when not running off the wall is to dim your screen.

You won't have to change any power settings. When you're at school, put your display brightness (keyboard shortcut) down below 50% and see how that affects your battery life.

 

[kanewolf]

On a laptop, the other thing that improves performance AND improves battery life is replacing a mechanical hard disk with an SSD. Since there is no motor to keep spinning, the non-active power usage of SSDs is minute.

 

[thx1138v2]

I don't know windows 10 yet but doesn't the "Create a power plan" allow you to create a custom configuration that runs one way when plugged in and another way when on battery?

 

[martinch]

Windows 8 can do some automatic switching of some settings when changing from battery to mains (e.g. dimming display when on battery). There's a detailed set of instructions here: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/5464-power-plan-settings-change-windows-8-a.html

 

[cazetoG]

Thanks guys for your answers. I'm already on an SSD, and I use the seperate power safer button in windows 10 (when you click on your battery icon it gives that option). But I just find out my computer last alot long when i'm using fx: the "balanced" mode when on battery compared to the full perfomance even though my screen is below 50%.

If I have to make a seperate powerplan that would be fine I guess, but then again, I just feel like when the PC is recieving power it should automatically be on full performance.