Any way to get better battery life?

[macmee]

This article:

Coding Horror: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

has made me quite sad! My Macbook pro gets the same battery life as my surface pro 2, and a macbook with a smaller battery than our SP2 gets double the battery life

Is there anything we can do about this? Any optimizations we can make?

 

[mitchellvii]

I'm rarely on battery because I use the tablet mostly in my office so I never noticed, but I am getting maybe 2 1/2 hours on a full charge on my SP - and this is just web surfing. This is on a fresh 8.1 install.

For example I was at full charge at the start of the football game and got a battery warning at half time. Just horrible.

 

[oion]

What sort of idiot puts entirely different classes of devices on a graph for direct comparison? He lost any credibility there and I lost all interest in reading upon seeing that.

That's like comparing MPG among cars by putting SUVs, cross-overs, semis, subcompacts, and motorcycles all on one graph and then saying "The very simple task of driving from point A to point B has vastly different outcomes on MPG for these different cars! OMG WHY IS THAT?"

(Edit to add: And apparently that's an Anandtech graph to boot. Meh.)

 

[oion]

I'm rarely on battery because I use the tablet mostly in my office so I never noticed, but I am getting maybe 2 1/2 hours on a full charge on my SP - and this is just web surfing. This is on a fresh 8.1 install.

For example I was at full charge at the start of the football game and got a battery warning at half time. Just horrible.

Dude, that ain't normal...

 

[The White Falcon]

This article:

Coding Horror: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

has made me quite sad! My Macbook pro gets the same battery life as my surface pro 2, and a macbook with a smaller battery than our SP2 gets double the battery life

Is there anything we can do about this? Any optimizations we can make?

As a commenter mentions, it's probably the apps. Microsoft hasn't done as well at mandating that programmers follow standards. This is why the Registry slowly becomes a disaster as you install and uninstall programs, because not every developer bothers to make the program remove the entries when you uninstall it. I'd imagine they (the developers) take the same attitude toward power management on their programs, a "Who cares! They bought it!" attitude.

Optimizations would be to reduce brightness, be aware of what programs run in the background, use wireless (particularly Bluetooth) only when you need it, etc.

 

[macmee]

What sort of idiot puts entirely different classes of devices on a graph for direct comparison? He lost any credibility there and I lost all interest in reading upon seeing that.

That's like comparing MPG among cars by putting SUVs, cross-overs, semis, subcompacts, and motorcycles all on one graph and then saying "The very simple task of driving from point A to point B has vastly different outcomes on MPG for these different cars! OMG WHY IS THAT?"

The fact that he brings up laptops in comparison to the surface is abit odd, although it's still shocking to me to see that the macbook air has a smaller batter and gets double the battery life that we do on our Surfaces. It is very nice to have full Windows and an i5 in our tablets, although I wish we got better battery life.

Overnight I lost 5% of battery when the device would of been sleeping, for instance.

 

[hogwldfltr]

Optimizations would be to reduce brightness, be aware of what programs run in the background, use wireless (particularly Bluetooth) only when you need it, etc.

Basically the same for any device. I used to do tech support for Apple and you'd be amazed at how many calls were about poor battery life.

 

[The White Falcon]

Basically the same for any device. I used to do tech support for Apple and you'd be amazed at how many calls were about poor battery life.

My issue with Apple is that with every software update I do on my iPhone, Bluetooth is always turned on when it completes. And when a new device is set up, too. That shouldn't be that way.

 

[mtalinm]

In just noticed default hibernate time is 60m. Just made it 15, should help w/standby.

 

[squadz]

My battery life has been great. Took one of the power options, modified the settings for on battery/plugged in and running perfect so far, no hard numbers, but enough for me not to have any issues with battery.

One tip: Lower brightness will on power, and lower processor speed as well. (ie. set minimum to 0% or 1% then set the maximum to 80% on battery). My thought is, if there's anything major I need to do, I will plug it in anyways. If it's on battery, all I'm doing is bare minimum (web browsing etc.)

Try it out.

 

[macmee]

My battery life has been great. Took one of the power options, modified the settings for on battery/plugged in and running perfect so far, no hard numbers, but enough for me not to have any issues with battery.

One tip: Lower brightness will on power, and lower processor speed as well. (ie. set minimum to 0% or 1% then set the maximum to 80% on battery). My thought is, if there's anything major I need to do, I will plug it in anyways. If it's on battery, all I'm doing is bare minimum (web browsing etc.)

You're saying you set the range of your cpu from 0-80%? I never knew you could do that, I only see 2 options, performance and power saver.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Dude, that ain't normal...

Yeah as I have mentioned many times before I believe there are some defective Surface Pro batteries out there. The range between people's different machines is incredible.. for instance I'm usually getting at least twice that.

I guess it this were the case, now Surface Pro 2 is out, no one's going to bother investigating it. Never mind I guess, just glad I got a good one myself!