Datasheet
68
Chapter 1
Hardware
At least 10 power schemes are possible, including Home/Office Desk (which doesn’t use
power management), Portable/Laptop (the default on a laptop PC), Always On, Max Battery,
and so on. From the Advanced tab, you can choose what happens when you close the lid,
when you press the power button, and when you press the sleep button.
If you select “Always show icon on the taskbar,” you can change power
schemes by clicking that icon without having to access the power properties
of the system.
By default, the alarms are set to notify you when only 10 percent of the battery life is left
and to put the system in hibernation when only 3 percent of the battery life is left. You can
change all these options to fit individual circumstances.
Power Configuration
The Advanced Configuration Power Interface (ACPI) must be supported by the system BIOS
in order to work properly. With ACPI, it is the BIOS that provides the operating system with
the necessary methods for controlling the hardware. This is in contrast to APM (Advanced
Power Management), which only gave a limited amount of power to the operating system and
let the BIOS do all the real work. Because of this, it is not uncommon to find legacy systems
that can support APM but not ACPI.
There are three main states of power management common in most operating
systems:
Hibernate This state saves all the contents of memory to the hard drive and preserves all
data and application information exactly where they are. When the system comes out of
hibernation, it returns the system to its previous state.
Standby This state leaves memory active but saves everything else to disk.
Suspend In most operating systems, this term is used interchangeably with Hibernate.
In Windows XP, Hibernate is used instead of Suspend.
Adding and Removing PC Card Devices
PC Card devices are designed to be easily removed and installed. They’re approximately the
size and shape of a thick credit card, and they fit into PC Card (PCMCIA) slots in the side
of the notebook PC. PC Card devices can include modems, network interface cards (NICs),
SCSI adapters, USB adapters, FireWire adapters, and wireless Ethernet cards.
To eject a PC Card device, press the eject button next to its slot. To insert a PC Card
device, press the device into the slot. You can do this while the computer is running. (That’s
called hot-plugging or hot-swapping.) However, in Windows, it’s a good idea to stop the PC
Card device before ejecting it, to ensure that all operations involving it complete normally. To
do so, double-click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray, click the device, and
then click Stop.
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