desktop-save-mode
is provided by package desktop
which comes with emacs, it is not provided by perspective.el
. Desktop mode can save and restore your buffers (with emacs 24.4 it can also save your windows and frames) but does not provide 'named window configurations'. Perhaps you can use bookmarks+ for this as @Drew suggests but I have never tried it.
The package perspectives
does not provide a way save and load perspectives. See this issue. As an alternative I would like to suggest you the package workgroups2
, it similar to perpective.el (it calls perspectives workgroups
) and provides that feature you want.