People will still be able to adjust these settings, and -- in a shift from Microsoft's past practice -- won't have to have administrator privileges to do it. That's part of a broader effort Microsoft is undertaking with Vista to enable people to run a machine without constantly having to switch to administrator mode. Moving to more operating as general user should make it easier for people to manage their system but harder for spyware and other malicious code to take control of it.
The challenge, Kay said, is that most people want the kind of instant on-and-off experience they get from televisions and other consumer electronics. He said that notion is something Intel and Microsoft have been touting for years but have yet to deliver on.
"If between the two of them they get it together, they've got a feature people want," Kay said.
Vista will also allow businesses to enforce power management settings across their whole fleet of computers, if they choose to do so. Using Microsoft's group policy tools, IT administrators will be able to decide that all machines will go to sleep after an hour of inactivity, for example. Graceffo said that data from the Environmental Protection Agency indicates that in many large companies, there are tons of computers that are left on all the time.
"Implementing this sleep state is really giving companies the means to shut down machines when they are idle," he said.
The savings from this and the other power changes Microsoft is making could be dramatic, top executives at the software maker said.
"We've done some calculations of power savings that we expect," Windows chief Jim Allchin said in a July interview. "I saw a number that showed, basically, when 100 million machines are running Vista, the power savings around the world. It is unbelievable."
In an effort to get members of the Windows team more excited about the progress they were making, Allchin shared some estimates internally. However, Graceffo said Microsoft is not releasing them publicly, because it wants to make sure its numbers are solid before touting them.
To fully realise its goals, though, Microsoft will need support from software makers. Customers will only adhere to the energy-saving default options if the software they use behaves properly. Since programs will no longer be able to block a Windows computer from going to sleep, some applications may need to be rewritten in order to gracefully handle such transitions.
For software makers that want to be proactive, Microsoft plans to smooth the way for programs to be notified of changes to the PC's power state. A program could be set to shift to simpler graphics when it is notified that a computer has been unplugged and has moved to battery power, for example. Or, say, a program might decide not to send display images at all once if it learns that a monitor has been turned off.
The power management changes also tie into broader work Microsoft is doing to improve the experience of using a Windows laptop.
In Vista, Microsoft is planning a central place for changing all manner of laptop-related settings such as power options, display settings, system volume, synchronisation options and other features. Known as the "mobility centre," it is similar in concept to the security centre Microsoft added to Windows with XP Service Pack 2.
Graceffo said that the work his team is doing may not be sexy, but it is part of an effort to make sure that Vista "just works" in a way that past versions of Windows have not.
"Some people treat it as ho-hum and yawn," he said. But "It's a significant area for us."
