Basically every laptop I’ve owned I’ve had to disable sleep when the lid is closed as I often leave them plugged in and want background tasks like downloads or updates to be able to run while I’m not using the machine. However, I don’t think PC laptops have a way to switch to a super low power state and just run background tasks like downloads, alarms and notifications or running scheduled tasks without just being left on in regular power mode. Why is this not just a default feature of laptops, given that phones and tablets have been doing this kind of thing for the last decade or more?
Does anyone know if there are plans to make power management for laptops allow for running certain tasks in Windows or Linux in the future? My smug Apple using friend tells me his Macbook already does this, but is the lack of this feature on PCs software related or something innate to x86 vs ARM architecture?
For more info on Apple’s implementation:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-power-nap-mh40773/mac
I suspect doing it well requires a tighter level of hardware/software integration than PCs can offer.
Intel did make efficiency and power cores separate parts of their CPUs a few years ago, and I wonder if AMD’s can do something similar. Perhaps if Intel and AMD would work with Linux Kernel developers and Microsoft on this feature we could see “power nap” like functionality in the future. Personally I’d like if whatever we had on PC was a bit more configurable than power nap seems to be though, allowing users to set allowable power budget, battery saving conditions and exactly which tasks can run in this mode as well as some power tracking features like on phones to see which apps are using the most.