Only Getting 4hrs of Battery Life

[ctitanic]

With this line of reasoning, the iPad Air (32.4W) is much more efficient, even when taking into account using the SP3 in only Metro Mode. If that was the case, the iPad Air would be achieving close to 13-14 hours, almost doubling the battery of some SP3 users, like myself, who tend to stay in the Metro environment more.
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This is wrong, the iPad Air has half of the components included in the Surface Pro 3 and a processor a lot less powerful that uses a lot less energy.

 

[GreyFox7]

@GreyFox7 — Thanks for this information. It seems you and I have similar work patterns. I am curious why you are are achieving 2-3 hours better battery life.

Let me ask this question — does the use of the pen significantly drain battery? I markup a lot of documents and annotate them heavily in Word. Does the combination of being in the Desktop UI and using the pen contribute to the battery wear?

(By the way, I love your comment about "nick nacks or quirky add ins." Not only do I not run them, but wouldn't know how to in the first place. The only adjustment I made was to turn off all live tiles in MUI since I found them annoying.)

Just a couple thoughts about potential battery suckers...
Do you routinely operate on the edge of wireless reception where it may connect and disconnect or frequently switch speeds?

Could you indicate how much ink you apply per page? and how many pages the documents are?
(just ballpark it in anyway you can... I never asked anyone that before so if it helps think in centimeters or millimeters or font sized letters per page)

Do you close word and open a new doc frequently ... it might be better to open a blank doc and minimize it so your not relaumching word all the time.

I Need to spend some more time looking at Word while inking. there might be more activity than usual bit I'm not sure yet.

If you could, run Resource Monitor and take a couple screen shots of the overview page after you've been working for a few minutes and post them. Make sure you get all the graphs. sort the CPU section by %CPU, sort Disk and Network by Total B/sec. Size the sections equally so we only see CPU, Disk, & Network and Memory is below off window.

 

[vancamp]

Typically hovering with a Wacom pen would use more power, but I don't know why it would with an Ntrig pen.

It's also been noted in the past that folks have sometimes seen a driver CPU load from the SD card. Perhaps that's been fixed, but if you keep a card in the SP3 you might try without. Ultimately, anything running in the background (that you might not be aware of) can eat power (and add extra heat)

 

[ctitanic]

Just posted a guide with few recommendations here:

http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/guide-all-about-battery-life.10374/

 

[ManUnited]

Just posted a guide with few recommendations here:

http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/guide-all-about-battery-life.10374/

Frank — Thank you for this information. It does assist me; however, it also shows how frustrating the switch from from a MBPR and iPad to a SP3 can be. That list of alterations (I would argue many are concessions or limitations) you posted are contrary to using my two Apple devices. Never have I had to limit them in anyway to stretch out the battery throughout a day. I never go below 50% brightness (most of the time I hover around 75%), let alone down to 25% as you first suggested.

As for comparison of the SP3 to the iPad based on wattage, again, I was making the argument you made of the SP3 vs. MBPs. The specs of the two are irrelevant based upon the MS argument that SP3 can replace both Apple devices. There is no 15-inch SP3 so why are you comparing it to a MBP of that size?

I would think most SP3 advocates would welcome questions from current Apple users as myself. Referring to us as "fanboys" in other posts is discourteous and unproductive.

 

[GreyFox7]

Frank — Thank you for this information. It does assist me; however, it also shows how frustrating the switch from from a MBPR and iPad to a SP3 can be. That list of alterations (I would argue many are concessions or limitations) you posted are contrary to using my two Apple devices. Never have I had to limit them in anyway to stretch out the battery throughout a day. I never go below 50% brightness (most of the time I hover around 75%), let alone down to 25% as you first suggested.

As for comparison of the SP3 to the iPad based on wattage, again, I was making the argument you made of the SP3 vs. MBPs. The specs of the two are irrelevant based upon the MS argument that SP3 can replace both Apple devices. There is no 15-inch SP3 so why are you comparing it to a MBP of that size?

I would think most SP3 advocates would welcome questions from current Apple users as myself. Referring to us as "fanboys" in other posts is discourteous and unproductive.

I think fanboy is taking on a new definition... {Those Geeks with USB fans cooling their Surface}

 

[ManUnited]

I think fanboy is taking on a new definition... {Those Geeks with USB fans cooling their Surface}

Well done, @GreyFox7. Well done. A bit of humor is always needed in the morning.

 

[leeshor]

@ManUnited

I'm not going to dispute the points you made in any way but I must point out that it certainly isn't necessary for you to limit anything or make any concessions to extend your battery life. It's strictly optional. It all depends on how much and what you do with your battery operated devices, beit a laptop, tablet or phone. There are users, on this forum, who are getting very good battery life without any sacrifices in day-to-day operation or special modifications.

 

[matt-helm]

I've been getting about 5 hours with my i7 100% brightness, Bluetooth mouse, 5ghz N access point with full bars, xbox 360 controller wireless adapter.

Gaming/browsing/RDP/email (exchange) always running.

I'm happy with it. If I had to go into battery saver mode I think I could squeeze 8-9 out of it.

 

[ctitanic]

Frank — Thank you for this information. It does assist me; however, it also shows how frustrating the switch from from a MBPR and iPad to a SP3 can be. That list of alterations (I would argue many are concessions or limitations) you posted are contrary to using my two Apple devices. Never have I had to limit them in anyway to stretch out the battery throughout a day. I never go below 50% brightness (most of the time I hover around 75%), let alone down to 25% as you first suggested..

You may not have those limitations but for sure you have others like the lack of a touch screen, pen and all type of restrictions from Jobs' dictatorship.

As for comparison of the SP3 to the iPad based on wattage, again, I was making the argument you made of the SP3 vs. MBPs. The specs of the two are irrelevant based upon the MS argument that SP3 can replace both Apple devices. There is no 15-inch SP3 so why are you comparing it to a MBP of that size?.

I just gave an example to show that MacBooks use a lot bigger batteries.

I would think most SP3 advocates would welcome questions from current Apple users as myself. Referring to us as "fanboys" in other posts is discourteous and unproductive.

It's hard to stay calmed answering questions from Apple "fanboys" because all we have received from those are attacks after attacks. In another hand, they come to these forums just to tell us how good Apple devices are. They don't stop comparing. I used an iPad as my main Tablet for more than two years. I was in a constant fight looking for workarounds to do anything that I wanted to do. But I never went to an Apple forum to establish comparisons or bash their products. Because it was my decision to buy an iPad. A decision that I took after analyzing the market and getting into the conclusion that there was not any other tablet on that moment better than an iPad. So if I got up to that point and bought it I had to live with that decision and no torture any other happy owner because of my decision or unhappiness with the product. I visited their forums to learn and ask questions and always kept my opinion about the iPad for myself or my blog. My point is that if I went to those Apple forums telling them about the iPad limitations would have been like telling them "Hey, you are a bunch of stupid incapable of taking a smart educated decision". So for respect, I asked questions when I had one without establishing comparisons. And that's all I ask from Apple users. Surface owners are not stupid. They know about how good Macbook are and decided not to buy one.

 

[ctitanic]

BTW, the SP3 by default comes with a brightness lower than 50% when used on batteries. So if you changed that you should expect a change in the battery life. That's just the way it's.

 

[ManUnited]

@ManUnited

I'm not going to dispute the points you made in any way but I must point out that it certainly isn't necessary for you to limit anything or make any concessions to extend your battery life. It's strictly optional. It all depends on how much and what you do with your battery operated devices, beit a laptop, tablet or phone. There are users, on this forum, who are getting very good battery life without any sacrifices in day-to-day operation or special modifications.

You make a good point. I guess what I was unprepared for was the variations in battery life from user to user. @GreyFox7 and I seemed to be using the SP3 in similar ways, yet his battery life was much better.

In addition, as a new user of 8.1 and SP3, I admit I was unprepared for the amount of tinkering with the settings some users are advocating.