14 DAY TRIAL // Cortana debuted on the PC with Windows 10 and Microsoft is working to add support for many more features in the coming updates and one such planned feature is the possibility of waking up a computer.
Support for waking up PCs will be added with help from Intel and its new technologies called “wake on voice” and Intel Ready Mode, both of which will allow the personal assistant to simply turn on your computer from a standby state whenever you call her by name.
As PCWorld writes, the two new features were announced at the Intel Developer Forum and will be offered in future Intel PCs coming with Skylake processors.
How it works
So basically, the two features work together to make it possible to wake your computer with a voice command, but how exactly will they do that?
First, the Intel Ready Mode allows the computer to enter a standby state during which the PC still works and a number of tasks are performed in the background, such as virus scanning or email downloading. The trick here is that it lowers power consumption, and on laptops, this is clearly a pretty huge improvement.
The wake of voice feature awaits for your command, so when you say “Hey Cortana,” the computer is automatically pushed out of the Intel Ready Mode state and loads back Windows 10. You should then be able to enter your account password, or if you're using Windows Hello to log in with your face.
The first computers coming with these features will be ready in 2016 and users will be allowed to enable the Hey Cortana support to wake up their PCs from the settings screen. Obviously, an Intel computer will be needed, but we all know that it's just a matter of time until similar features arrive on AMD PCs too.