User`s guide

Chapter 2: Power and Your Computer

2–14 Digital HiNote VP 500 Series

Power Management Modes

Your notebook computer is factory-configured with preset power management values. If you

are not an advanced user, start by using the factory-configured power management settings. If

you find that the factory settings do not fit your specific needs, enter the BIOS Setup Program

and make the needed changes.

If you choose to set your own power saving features, you should understand how it affects

battery run time and system performance before changing a setting.

The power management features are designed to conserve as much electricity as possible by

putting the notebook’s components into a low power consumption mode as often as possible.

These low power modes are referred to as Standby and Suspend.

Standby Mode

In this mode, user components such as the HDD, FDD or CD-ROM drive and the LCD back-lit

display are powered off and the CPU speed is reduced. Other components, transparent to the

user, are put in their lowest active states.

Standby Mode is entered:

• Automatically when the system remains idle for the specified time set in the

Standby Time-out field of the BIOS Setup Program.

• Manually by pressing the [fn + esc] key combination.

Standby Mode is exited by any of the following actions:

• Pressing any key on the keyboard

• Touch pad or externally connected mouse activity

• Serial or parallel port activity

• PC Card activity

Suspend Mode

There are actually two levels of Suspend: Suspend (to RAM) Time-out and Suspend-to-Disk.

Suspend to RAM saves power by cutting power to the DMA clocks, suspending the math co-

processor, turning the video off, and turning off all controllable peripheral devices.

Suspend-to-Disk provides the greatest power saving capabilities by essentially turning off the

system. Suspend-to-Disk can be configured by entering the BIOS Setup Program. In this

mode, all system logic (except for the battery charger) is turned off. During the Suspend-to-

Disk mode, the DRAM and video memory are saved to the hard disk and are restored when the

system is resumed.

Suspend Mode is exited as follows.

• Pressing the Suspend/Resume button.