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The traditional Sleep (ACPI S3) state consumes 500 milliwatts or more of average power consumption to maintain memory in self-refresh and allow the platform to wake on user input. This gives the typical mobile system with a 45-watt-hour battery just under 100 hours of Sleep time on a full charge. However, Connected Standby systems use low-power memory and power-optimized embedded controllers to consume less than 150 milliwatts in most configurations. This allows the typical platform to remain in Sleep for 300 hours on a full battery charge—3 times longer than the traditional Sleep state.
Connected Standby has longer battery life than Sleep and also maintains connectivity. This allows the user to no longer worry about the battery life tradeoff between Sleep and Hibernate, nor worry about the differences in resume performance. A user of a Connected Standby PC can just shut the lid or press the power button and be assured the system will enter a low-power mode and maintain connectivity—just like a smartphone.
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Sorry to revive an old thread, but I'm thinking about buying an SP3 as a laptop replacement and am reading various threads in this forum. A very helpful forum, overall, so many thanks to all who regularly contribute.
On to my question. I understand that ctitanic is just quoting from Microsoft here (above), but does Microsoft's description sound wrong to anybody else? It says that in traditional sleep you get, on a 45-watt-hour battery, "just under 100 hours of Sleep time on a full charge." That would mean on traditional Sleep you are losing about 1% per hour, according to MS.
I have a Vaio Pro 11. It's an i5-4200U processor w/ 4GB ram. I am not certain, but I believe it's battery is LESS than 45-watt-hours (it's a tiny, tiny laptop. Weighs less than 2 lbs). When I put it to sleep, I actually only lose about 0.1% per hour -- about 10X less than MS suggests. Indeed, last night I put it to sleep at around 6pm and the battery life was 89%. This morning I woke it up at about 9am (15 hours later) and battery life was 88%.
In other words, is MS just blowing smoke to make "Connected Standby" sound better than it really is? On virtually every laptop I've owned in the last 5 years, I lose WAY less than 1% per hour in Sleep mode. And based on what I'm reading in this forum, it sounds like people using SP3 are losing far more than then 0.1% per hour that I lose on my laptop in traditional Sleep mode.
So what's the truth? Is MS greatly exaggerating its claims of the battery benefits of Connected Standby?
Is there any way to disable Connected Standby and to just use regular old traditional Sleep mode on a Surface Pro 3? Frankly, if I were to own an SP3, I don't really need it to have a perpetual internet connection--that's what my smartphone is for. I'd rather have the improved battery life.