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?

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
    2·
    9 months ago

    Isn’t this the idea of having a chipset (Northbridge/Southbridge) on the board, to handle some of these IO tasks?

    Well, not in the way we are talking here. The bridges work under the CPU’s direct commands. When the CPU goes to sleep, they have nothing to do either.

    Maybe a PC’s CPU can do some short time limited sleep like microcontrollers do, and maybe that would be useful for such scenario’s. But even then the main problem remains that the CPU wants to be in control of everything.