Thank you for your help and advice.
If other folks are having issues with performance and they don't have the gear symbol when they first login I think folks should check to see if in the cfn file wayland=false and they should try to change it to wayland=true.
I have been on my Dell and zorin 17 is behaving nicely. I am at 42% battery with power settings on balanced mode and my screen does not dim anymore.
Thank you
SOLVED