Enhanced Enterprise Power Manageability

Windows 7 enables IT pros to better manage power and troubleshoot related problems. Similarly, they can centrally control more power-management settings at a more precise level. These settings include the new Adaptive Display Brightness, Reserve Battery Notification Level, and Allowing Automatic Sleep with Open Network Files.

IT pros can configure power-management policy using a new power WMI provider. WMI is a widely used industry-standard management interface that now enables configuration of power-management settings and the active power plan. Windows 7 exposes WMI to non-Microsoft® management tools, which allows IT pros to write scripts that query and manage power-management settings from multiple remote client computers. IT pros can also configure power management settings by using Group Policy preferences. By doing so, IT pros can choose which power-management settings to enforce and which settings users can change.

In Windows 7, deeper command-line driven Power Efficiency Diagnostics enable IT pros to quickly determine root causes of power efficiency issues. These diagnostics are in the Powercfg utility. When IT pros run the diagnostics, the utility generates a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) report that identifies common power-management problems. For example, the report provides information about the health of the portable computer’s battery.