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?
You’ve answered your own question. It’s a PC laptop with a full fat processor and GPU. Certain x86 chips which have super low power states still don’t make use of it because of the billion softwares there may be installed which keep the processor from entering that state. Then there’s the motherboard issue. Not all of them support such states. Here’s a video from Wolfgang, it’s for PCs but the same applies for laptops.