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Guide: All About Battery Life

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
Hate to see it that way but I changed away from an android tablet to this so I didn't have to use half ass programs to do what I want. Guess I will be forever waiting for a laptop the size of an SP3. I can deal with 4-5 hour battery life for the time being, would love to drop adobe flash but I can't seem to figure out how to make Firefox and HTML5 to get along. Would love to know why HTML5 in Firefox has a max resolution of 720p. Don't even get me started on the Youtube MUI apps what a freaking joke...
The problem you're facing is Firefox is still doing old school coding on Windows and Google has no motivation for efficiency on Windows as they want to promote Android and Chrome OS in the mobility segment.
 

Stockholmstar

New Member
Thanks for this guide. I followed everything in this guide and it made a huge difference. I went from around 4 hours to over 6 by following these steps. Especially killing start up apps helped a lot. Just one thing though, in spite of having turned off indexing on battery power, the machine is actually doing this as I write this, draining the battery. Why is this? Is there something more I need to do?

On a side note, it is annoying that it should be this hard getting a decent battery time. I have macbooks too, and they don't suffer from this.
 

Stockholmstar

New Member
Thanks. Yes, I have disabled the pdf:s. It helped.
What is a "normal" discharge rate for let's say working back and forth in Office 2013, Outlook open, Firefox running? BatteryBar Pro shows between 7000 and 12000 mW and occasionally up to 20000 mW during these conditions.
 
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ctitanic

ctitanic

Well-Known Member
Thanks. Yes, I have disabled the pdf:s. It helped.
What is a "normal" discharge rate for let's say working back and forth in Office 2013, Outlook open, Firefox running? BatteryBar Pro shows between 7000 and 12000 mW and occasionally up to 20000 mW during these conditions.
I have found Battery Pro to be very inaccurate. So I don't have an answer to your question.
 

belgiantrotter

New Member
hi all,

just bought a surface 3 about 3 days ago... I configured it and have been using it for a while now. I love the machine but my battery life is just crap... I get about 4 hours. granted the first day firmware and windows updates did a lot of CPU intensive stuff.
I realize that 9 hours is probably never going to happen but 7 to 8 hours should be doable... in fact... if i cant reach 7 of moderate using then this device is going back to the store for a refund... I want this device to be able to handle a day at work reading emails and doing stuff in office without a charge...

from the looks of thing currently my device is not meeting that requirement... by battery report is stating anything between 4 to 5 hours!!! unacceptable for a machine of 1500 $

I have been reading this thread in detail here's what i have done so far
- i have brightness set very very low
- i have limited tasks/settings running when booting up
- removed most folders in windows search
- i have batterbar installed to give me some more info around the battery


my battery was going down fast again until i installed that tune-up software, it detected I am on battery and activated the ''economy'' mode.
BatteryBar is now stating 2 hours more of expected battery!!! that is nuts
i am discharging at about 4000-6000 mV right now

I going to have some additional tests and if need be reset the device and start over because when setting it up it asked to setup a new device or restore the settings of another one and I selected my desktop backup image which gave me all my settings but might not be the best for the surface pro...

my batter report is giving worrying issues around the PEN that is currently in my bag and not being used...

any tips/recommendations welcome!
 

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ctitanic

ctitanic

Well-Known Member
hi all,

just bought a surface 3 about 3 days ago... I configured it and have been using it for a while now. I love the machine but my battery life is just crap... I get about 4 hours. granted the first day firmware and windows updates did a lot of CPU intensive stuff.
I realize that 9 hours is probably never going to happen but 7 to 8 hours should be doable... in fact... if i cant reach 7 of moderate using then this device is going back to the store for a refund... I want this device to be able to handle a day at work reading emails and doing stuff in office without a charge...

from the looks of thing currently my device is not meeting that requirement... by battery report is stating anything between 4 to 5 hours!!! unacceptable for a machine of 1500 $

I have been reading this thread in detail here's what i have done so far
- i have brightness set very very low
- i have limited tasks/settings running when booting up
- removed most folders in windows search
- i have batterbar installed to give me some more info around the battery


my battery was going down fast again until i installed that tune-up software, it detected I am on battery and activated the ''economy'' mode.
BatteryBar is now stating 2 hours more of expected battery!!! that is nuts
i am discharging at about 4000-6000 mV right now

I going to have some additional tests and if need be reset the device and start over because when setting it up it asked to setup a new device or restore the settings of another one and I selected my desktop backup image which gave me all my settings but might not be the best for the surface pro...

my batter report is giving worrying issues around the PEN that is currently in my bag and not being used...

any tips/recommendations welcome!
Try installing this program:

http://www.tune-up.com/

Within other options it has one to save battery.

Capture.JPG
 

belgiantrotter

New Member
i actually have it running... but i'd like to get decent battery times without these settings...
i am not about to buy another piece of software for something MS should do out of the box with windows 8.1 or with the purchase of a surface...

anybody knows what these errors are on my battery report? this worrie me more for the moment..

thanks
 
OP
ctitanic

ctitanic

Well-Known Member
i actually have it running... but i'd like to get decent battery times without these settings...
i am not about to buy another piece of software for something MS should do out of the box with windows 8.1 or with the purchase of a surface...

anybody knows what these errors are on my battery report? this worrie me more for the moment..

thanks
You need to reinstall this driver
Surface Type Cover Firmware Update
 

belgiantrotter

New Member
ok i decided to do a full reset and configure it from scratch.
I am now step by step going to install the software that i need on this device and see what affects my battery life the most.

I am right now working of a full first charge and see how long it will last. some initial remarks though
- after the reset my battery reports now shows a capacity of 42,005 mWh which is near the design capacity. before the reset it gave me a capacity just around 40.000
- when discharging my battery goes from 100% to 94% and then goes down gradually. i never seem to get 98, 96, ...
- at current rate according to batterybar i have 5 hours remaining and i already used 2 hours + a night of standby
- the sleepstudy was all green this time with nearly no discharge in standby.

after this discharge i'm installing office 365 and i will look at the impact it has. (suspecting things like Lync and outlook running in the background will affect it)

my batterreport currently does not list an aweful lot... most is empty...
as for the second report i still have high cpu usage on a few elements including ieexplorer... (seems highly unlikely i will be able to get this down...)
 

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