Any way to get better battery life?

[macmee]

Agreed with the rest of your assessment, but--



Jeff (jnjroach) was explaining that hibernate is bad for SSDs, which is what Pro has, so hibernate may not even be an option there. In which case... turn off, I suppose.

It is especially bad for users with the 8GB model where the pagefiles being written to the SSD can be substancially big.

IO aside, I am slightly disappointed still with my battery life. The power case cannot come out soon enough.

 

[jnjroach]

I was on battery with my Pro 2 from 6 AM to 12:30 PM today doing normal work stuff, Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), inking notes in OneNote, doing some research on the web and screen sharing during a conference call using Lync 2013, at 12:30 I was back at my desk and plugged back in I had 34% battery remaining.

 

[sillyrabbitt123]

i just dont get it just when i think i get it i dont. right now i am not streaming anything, setup the "max battery" setting which is outlined in this thread. yesterday i finally got the battery meter to say 6:23 remaining now i am on 93% and it says 2:39 remaining WTH?

thanks

 

[jnjroach]

i just dont get it just when i think i get it i dont. right now i am not streaming anything, setup the "max battery" setting which is outlined in this thread. yesterday i finally got the battery meter to say 6:23 remaining now i am on 93% and it says 2:39 remaining WTH?

thanks

The battery meter evaluates ranges based on load on the CPU, DISK, RAM and Network. Is it possible that there is a maintenance task running currently? Also, have you tweaked advanced Power Management Settings or updated any of the drivers outside the Firmware Updates? Any of these can adversely affect battery life.

I've been on Battery since 4:30 PM PDT it is now 6:51 PM PDT and I have 76% left with an estimate of 6 hours 29 minutes, I'm doing Office Tasks and Surfing the web.

 

[Dahnark]

Some program for monitoring the battery stats? Like betterbatterystats on Android?

 

[sillyrabbitt123]

thanks guys! the weird thing is that 20 mins after i posted this it climbed to 6:45 remaining. the only thing i added was HP print drivers/software since my printer wasnt reconnecting nothing else.

but i am happy if i get 5 - 6 hrs thats all i need.

10 mins later now it says 2:30 again...

now i checked again i say 6:55

 

[oion]

thanks guys! the weird thing is that 20 mins after i posted this it climbed to 6:45 remaining. the only thing i added was HP print drivers/software since my printer wasnt reconnecting nothing else.

but i am happy if i get 5 - 6 hrs thats all i need.

10 mins later now it says 2:30 again...

now i checked again i say 6:55

From my experience with previous laptops, the battery meter indication will change wildly because it'll give the estimated time left based on the moment you mouseover--every single process that happens to be running that instant. But the fact is that normal people under normal usage don't run the same processes and everything 100% all the time. You're going to have idle periods, wifi wouldn't be throttled full unless you're torrenting, so on.

 

[sillyrabbitt123]

the real test will be the long plane ride when i throw everything at the SP2. i will know how long it lasted

 

[sillyrabbitt123]

the good news is i checked today and for the first time ever it list over 10 hours remaining

 

[oion]

the good news is i checked today and for the first time ever it list over 10 hours remaining

Sure, and did you check six minutes later while doing other things like turning on Steam? It's going to vacillate. The best test is a run-down during your normal use.

 

[sillyrabbitt123]

yup 6 mins later it said 15 hours

 

[oion]

yup 6 mins later it said 15�� hours

Eh, I'm seeing weird symbols. If you mean 15 hours on a Surface Pro 2, that'd be far out since no existing benchmark official or otherwise has gotten that much (and that requires running it down). You are running it down to shut down, right?