Really poor battery life with PDF reading

[girarcat]

Hey all! Today I’ve been reading a 600 pages PDF document (basically text and graphs) with the W8 default Reader and also making annotations on it with the Stylus. I noticed my SP2 became quite hot, with the fans working every now and then. I checked the task manager and saw the Reader had a 30-35% of CPU usage (it was the only process with high CPU usage).

Furthermore, the Reader became quite choppy, with some lag when writing with the stylus or when swapping from one page to another.

I drained my battery in 3 hours! (I normally get a 5-6h battery life).

Is that any kind of problem with my SP2, or it can just be caused because of the PDF document being too heavy, faulty or something like that?
This is not the first time having a really poor battery life when reading PDF documents, though I cannot recall if the other times I was reading a heavy document or a light one...

I had no desktop app running, Bluetooth off, Type Cover detached, Brightness at 60% and Dropbox disabled.

Thanks!

 

[GoodBytes]

While I can't confirm that I a,m having this, as I don't have a 600 page PDF, nor time to test it out,
I know that the the Reader app is GPU intensive, as it's fully rendered by the GPU. Intel graphic solution is not very efficient. At idle it operates better (lower power) than Nvidia and AMD current solutions, but under load, oh boy, it's awful.
Use Adobe Reader desktop version (not Windows 8 App). Granted it crappier, but it uses the CPU to render instead which while it won't be as smooth as experience (as it's Adobe, and CPU), it will be cooler operating, and should be better on your battery life as well. You can also try Office 2013. Word can read (and edit) PDF's. Office 2013 uses the GPU to render the interface, but it is more optimized for heavy document, so in theory it should be fine, else, no choice, go with Adobe Reader.

 

[girarcat]

Thanks for your tip. Sometimes I use the desktop version of Adobe Reader, but it's quite choppy when used with your fingers. For studying is much more practical the W8 Reader or the Adobe Reader Touch, though the last one doesn't allow you to write on the PDF with the stylus...

 

[jnjroach]

Have you considered printing the PDF to OneNote?

 

[kristalsoldier]

Have you considered printing the PDF to OneNote?

But doesn't that merely end up with the PDF file as a background image in OneNote and for a 600-page PDF document that would be one heck of an image. Not sure if that would be a practical solution really.

 

[jnjroach]

I would print it to Sub-pages, giving each page its own thus speeding up the program especially if you are using heavy inking. I do this for large PowerPoint Notes Handouts that basically how we make courseware, some of these are 1000 of pages.... each Chapter or Model gets a Page and then each page of the Model gets a sub-page....

 

[kristalsoldier]

I would print it to Sub-pages, giving each page its own thus speeding up the program especially if you are using heavy inking. I do this for large PowerPoint Notes Handouts that basically how we make courseware, some of these are 1000 of pages.... each Chapter or Model gets a Page and then each page of the Model gets a sub-page....

You must have huge OneNote notebooks!!!!!

 

[jnjroach]

I have 3 major Notebooks, Personal, Current Work and Archive Work. The Archive Notebook has notes from as far back as 2003. Total size is around 7GB.

 

[girarcat]

Have you considered printing the PDF to OneNote?

That would be great, In fact when I decided to buy the SP2 my intention was to use it this way at university, but I have some problems when trying to print a PDF to OneNote.
As you can see in the picture, when I print a document to OneNote, the page of the document appears with a blank sheet underneath with the date and title of the document.



This is not a big deal when using OneNote, but when I export it as a PDF again (for example for having it printed, sending it to a friend, or just for viewing it with another computer where I don’t have OneNote installed), the new PDF created by OneNote has a written page and then a blank one, a written page and a white one again, and so on.



How can I erase these white sheets added by OneNote? Or how can I convert the OneNote file to a regular PDF document without this problem?

Thanks!

 

[jnjroach]

What are you using for PDF Rendering? When I print from DrawboardPDF I get one Subpage per PDF Page (So if the dock is 175 pages I get 1x Page and 174x Subpages) If you want to keep the PDF File format for the final product the OneNote Solution isn't the best, I would invest in DrawboardPDF or other annotator. Another option is using Word 2013 it supports opening PDF files and inking.

 

[girarcat]

I'll try the apps you suggest.

By the way, is there any way to print PDF to OneNote without having the problem of the blank page? I really like how OneNote works and it could be very useful to me if I could write with the stylus on a PDF with this programme without the blank pages issue...

 

[jnjroach]

I don't have an issue with the plank page, what are you using for PDF Reader?