A method of controlling power consumption in a computer uses a power management program installed on the computer to detect the identities of processes running on the computer which maintain the computer in a high power state in the absence of input activity. The program compares the identity of the or each process running on the computer with a set of identities of previously identified processes and causes the computer to adopt a low power state if the detected identity of a process, or the detected identities of all the processes, running on the computer is/are in the set of previously identified processes.