Hewlett-Packard had announced a new power management software for its laptops. The software, named Power Assistant, will help companies in keeping track of their power usage and cur energy costs. HP made the announcement on Tuesday.
HP also announced new business laptops–the ProBook 6445b and ProBook 6545b. These laptops are designed for maximum power efficiency from the ground-up. These feature dedicated hardware and software to track energy costs over time.
Power Assistant allows users to measure and manage the power used by laptops. Using the software, it is possible to accurately estimate the cost of running laptops for one day, week or year. This capability will allow IT managers to create power-saving budgets and goals for the computers in the office.
Power Assistant also allows users to change the power settings in the laptop in order to reduce the power consumption. Power consumption can be reduced by lowering the brightness of the laptop monitor, turning off wireless or by reducing the speed of the microprocessor.
By customizing the power settings, it is also possible to enhance the battery life. Most other laptop manufacturers have developed software to manage power drawn to extend battery life.
Power Assistance can identify components and software features that are drawing more power. It depicts power consumption information in the form of bar and pie charts to allow IT managers to easily comprehend the data.
Data accumulated by the software can be fed to a power management console from where IT managers will be able to customize power profiles of laptop. For example, IT managers can put laptops into hibernate mode more often and save lots of power.
The power saving measurements are possible because of a special circuit built into the motherboard of HP laptops. In future, the circuit will be integrated into other laptop and desktop models as well.
HP’s ProBook 6445b features a 14-inch screen and weighs 2.41 Kg. The other model i.e. ProBook 6545b features a 15.6-inch screen and weighs 2.7 Kg. Users can choose between AMD’s Turion, Athlon or Sempron processors. The laptops also come with multiple operating system options. Users can choose either Windows 7 or Linux.
The laptops will support up to 8 GB of RAM. The laptops will be available for sale from October 22nd onwards starting at $799.