> For instance, why not have it set up so
> that on mains you’re on ‘balanced’
> but when you go to battery you
> automatically go to ‘power saving’?

Toshiba’s power saver utility does something similar (on XP – haven’t upgraded to Vista)

> Also, I’d appreciate a mode whereby
> after an idle period, instead of the
> monitor being turned off, it goes into
> a very dim mode

My work Mac does that.

I too thought this was odd. So I ran my own test on my T4220 Tablet, a T7100 1.8GHz/3GB RAM/5400rpm 120GB HDD…

High Performance> 54215
Balanced > 56723

The big difference was in HDD speeds. So I ran PCMark05 and CrystalMark’s Disk Mark. In both results, High Performance beat out Balanced by varying margins. I don’t think High Performance is faster, I think there is a flaw in the program/it’s scoring methods.

There’s much about the power settings that I find puzzling. For instance, why not have it set up so that on mains you’re on ‘balanced’ but when you go to battery you automatically go to ‘power saving’? (I apreciate that you can tweak the settings of ‘balanced’ so that this is effectively what happens.)

Also, I’d appreciate a mode whereby after an idle period, instead of the monitor being turned off, it goes into a very dim mode, where you can at least see what’s on the desktop, or whether certain activities are still running. Or does that already exist?

I’ve seen similar results in my usage; balanced tends to be faster than high performance.

Why this is the case – no idea.