Windows 8 Extends Battery Life by Reducing Memory Needs.

CPU, Feature 3, Memory, Operating System, Power Management - By admin on Thursday, September 29, 2011 - 10:25

Microsoft knows that many of us use laptops rather than desktops these days and we also want to use a lot of apps at the same time. They also know that more memory equals more RAM, which means more battery usage, which in turn means lower run times for our laptops.
So, what Microsoft has done is to identify ways to free up memory requirements and still have an efficient and effective operating system.

Combining memory so that memory takes up less space

Microsoft has developed a way of combining memory so that memory takes up less space. What normally happens is that when you install an application, it will allocate some extra memory to that app in case you need it in future. Install lots of apps and you have lots of sets of allocated memory just sitting there, doing nothing, but taking up valuable memory space. By using memory combining, Windows 8 assesses the actual memory needs of an app and then deletes all duplicate memory entries across the system memory. In this way Microsoft has managed to free up to 100MBs of memory.

Intelligent OS

Plus, instead of all OS services running all the time and taking up memory, in Windows 8 they moved 13 OS services to a 'start on demand' model. And they also developed a way of identifying high priority and low priority memory uses, to ensure that even when memory is scare, your vital apps don't become unresponsive.

The Proof is In the Testing

Microsoft took a three year old laptop with 1GB RAM and separately installed both Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems on it. They rebooted the machine several times to simulate normal usage and then let the laptop idle for a while.

By looking at Task Manager they saw that using Windows 8 dramatically reduced the amount of memory needed by the OS. CPU usage was reduced by 4% and physical memory by 12% As shown below):

Above: Memory usage with Windows 7 running Service Pack 1.

Above: Memory usage using Windows 8.

In short, Windows 8 is proving to be a very efficient running system indeed and one that will, because of its more efficient use of memory, also run quite easily on older machines.