I was having a read of this month’s TechNet Ireland Newletter from Colm Torris (MS Northern Ireland) when I saw a link for controlling power management on Windows XP using Group Policy. This is something that pops up on the Minasi Forum about twice a year. The link was for a solution called EZ GPO from Energy Star. You’ll know Energy Star from the little blue logo often found on Monitors and PC’s. I actually remember someone mentioning this on MR&D before but I’d never followed up.
On this page you’ll also find some whitepapers that illustrate how you can save money by saving power. This sort of thing is worth checking out. On a past job, we decided to go with more expensive TFT’s over CRT’s not only for space savings but also because over a year, we calculated that they could actually save the company money.
EX GPO is a free solution so you can’t argue with that. You install a service on your PC (you’ll likely want to include it in an image or deploy using something like SMS 2003). This agent is required because power settings are per user and require administrator access. You then define group policy using an included GPO ADM template.
You’ll now be able to manage power settings for your desktop and laptop network and save lots of money on power while helping to save the planet.