.Yamato Thinking

“Cars are amazing! Even though they’re built with so many complex technologies, anyone can drive them. I want to make computers as easy to use as a car.”

This type of thinking is common among Lenovo engineers.

With the new version of Power Manager, the ThinkPad utility for managing power settings, the above sentiment may be stronger than ever.

1. An aesthetic user interface that’s easy to use
2. A comprehensive set of power settings
3. Green power

These three points were the focus for the new Power Manager 2.30. From the very beginning of development, the developers toiled with the question, “How can we make it both easy to use and have an attractive interface?”.

For starters, the developers used a brand new design. They added a background gradient to the familiar window, then added a slider that can be moved to easily select power settings, and finally added a green leaf mark that appears to indicate when your power settings meet industry recognized green standards.

But perhaps the biggest change in the new Power Manager is that features are now divided into two views, Basic and Advanced.

From the beginner who is using a computer for the first time to the advanced user, such as a corporate IT administrator, features are placed into the appropriate views to satisfy the needs of all types of users. The Basic view is simple enough for anyone to use, while the Advanced view is made to allow detailed power management.

Basic View

Advanced View

Another new feature is the ability to control Vista’s Sidebar and Gadgets.

Sidebar and Gadgets

The new version of Power Manager was developed using a new Microsoft development platform called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WPF has features such as operating system independence and the ability to create rich user interfaces easily. Because of this, Power Manager’s code was rewritten from the ground up. New code meant increased workload, but the developers took every pain to be thorough and attend to the smallest of details. (We even heard that the developers spent long nights making sure that the window could be resized freely while still maintaining normal appearance and operation.)

Convenient functions from previous versions of Power Manager also made it into the new version.

For example, popular features such as Battery Stretch and InstantResume are included in the new Power Manager. When battery power becomes low, Battery Stretch allows the battery’s life to be extended by turning off notebook functions that aren’t being used. InstantResume keeps your wireless connection active even when you close the lid of your notebook so that you can move from office to conference room without loosing your connection.

For the new Power Manager, the developers used a car as a metaphor and thought if the keyboard and pointing device are the steering wheel, then power management is the accelerator. Drive for energy efficiency by using only the level of performance and features you need. That’s the kind of ThinkPad design that Lenovo engineers pursue everyday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 10:55 and is filed under Technology | 技術解説. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.