What power plan do you choose while on AC?

There are so many power plan options. What is the difference between " Energy Saver" and " Power Saver"?

What do you choose among Balanced, High performance, Energy saver, Power saver, etc. etc....? If I just do web browsing, Office tasks, some video watching, is either of the two "savers" enough or is Balanced better? Assuming using AC, not battery, there is no point to save power/energy, but high performance does cause more wear to the hardware, does it?

 

I normally use Balanced.

I have customized them for greater performance once plugged in, and power saving features when running off of battery.

For ex:
When on AC brightness is all the way up, and the GPU is also on.

When on battery brightness is all the way down, and the GPU is off.

 

Sorry for being very dumb: if GPU is off, does that mean you can't watch video? I didn't know you could let GPU off (how to do that, btw?).

 

I have an IGP and a GPU on my laptop (Nvidia Hybrid Graphics). Without my GPU watching HD videos is a hassle and quite laggy.

 

I make my own power plan, switching off many of the idle timers, disabling wifi power control and generally using "balanced" for many other settings when on AC power.

As far as using the Nvidia card, for a certain few applications I set them to run with that card only (photoshop, illustrator, DVD player etc.). The rest I leave the decision of which card to use up to the system

 

I leave my CPU mostly parked in the lowest setting. It can play blu-ray rips just fine.

 

I've customized some of the settings, but I generally put it on Max Performance when running on AC power. I adjust brightness of the screen to suit the brightness of the environment.

 

Power Source Optimized. Before I had a Thinkpad I used Balanced.

 

Custom made Power Source Optimized for performance on AC and maximum power savings on battery.

 

Thanks for the replies. So what are the answers to:

1. What is the difference between "Energy Saver" and "Power Saver"?

2.Assuming using AC, there is no point to save power/energy, but does high performance does cause more wear to the hardware? (IOW does choosing lower settings prolong the machine's life?)

 

Well, aside from the production of heat (which my X201 and R400 does an excellent job of dissipating, I might add ), which unmonitored and uncontrolled can and often does lead to the malfunction of certain parts, I don't think "high performance" degrades the components. Of course, the heat problem can be aggravated by the clogging of the exhausts of the fans etc., which can created hardware-related problems.

Besides this, the only item that would degrade in the sense in which you mean it would be the HDD, but I think they are also nowadays "smartly" managed.

 

I always put my laptop on max performance either on AC or battery