Power Management

[enjay]

What do you use to manage power settings? We've got wake-on-LAN sorted, and nightly shutdowns can be done from PSTools, but what I'm looking for is something which a) can set different monitor time-outs on different PCs, and b) hibernate idle computers.

 

We used PowerOut in the past, but I seemingly foolishly upgraded this to the latest version, now called TaskForceCO2, and everything has gone down-hill since.

 

TFCO2 works exactly as expected for my admin account, but everyone else has other experiences, typically a 3-minute time-out on the monitor. So, either TFCO2 is just inherently flawed, doesn't like our roaming profiles or users need access to the Power Settings Control Panel options in order for it to work (the manufacturers claim none of these to be the case).

 

So I guess I have two questions. 1) does anyone have TFCO2 working on CC3, and 2) what other products are people using?

[john]

We take advantage of Windows 7 GPO's on our PCs as they all run Windows 7, so they sleep after very limited time in-active. Similar things seemed to work most of the time wiht Windows XP using Group Policy Preferences on Windows XP clients using a Server 2008 server, was a bit hit and miss but did run ok at times. This was free as well, assuming you have a 2008 Server and XP clients.

[enjay]

Thanks John. Unfortunately we're XP and 2003 at present. Good to know it is better with Win7 though, that's something to look forward to at least.

[plexer]

We're looking at powerman atm it has good reporting features.

 

Ben

[nobleguy]

After trying almost every product on the market we settled on Data Synergy's PowerMAN. Their ever helpful support team was the big factor that won us over. I've rarely dealt with a product that seems so well supported.

 

The software is similar to some of the competition we tried but unlike many it just works! The reporting is a pretty useful feature at the start to see what's going on but the bit I like most is that we have been able to setup a policy for when nobody is logged on. This has made the biggest difference to our power management in the daytime.

[qcomer]

Looking at deploying Faronics PowerSave (Ive used it in the past at other districts). California school districts get a rebate which makes it free for all desktops.