Surface RT OS Glitch

[beman39]

looks like I was able to find a OS glitch already in the 2 days I've had this device! lol so I was wondering if someone could test my theory and try this out...if you goto device manager then choose Bluetooth then right click on Bluetooth radio to bring up the window and choose power management and if you uncheck "allow the computer to turn off this device" close that and then head over to network adapters and right click on "marvel AVASTAR wireless N-controller" to bring up the window and choose power management and if you uncheck "allow the computer to turn off this device" and then close everything and put the computer to sleep for a few minutes and if my theory is right, you will now not be able to awake it or the screen won't come on but it is awake I believe...but I'm not sure...yea so maybe someone else can verify this? LOL

 

[jnjroach]

It prevents the OS from going into Connected Standby and messes up the modern Power Management Scheme so I'm not surprised. Also in 8.1 if you turn off the Bluetooth completely your battery life goes down not up and in a very drastic way. These Connected Standby capable machines are very different from traditional machines (this goes for Intel's Clover Trail and Bay Trail Atoms and Haswell SoC systems as well).

 

[kristalsoldier]

It prevents the OS from going into Connected Standby and messes up the modern Power Management Scheme so I'm not surprised. Also in 8.1 if you turn off the Bluetooth completely your battery life goes down not up and in a very drastic way. These Connected Standby capable machines are very different from traditional machines (this goes for Intel's Clover Trail and Bay Trail Atoms and Haswell SoC systems as well).

Can you explain - in as non-technical a way as possible - why this happens? Or, perhaps point me to where I can read up on this?

 

[jnjroach]

On any Connected Standby System on Chip (S0iX SoC) when left alone it quickly enters a lower than S3 Power State (You would know S3 as "Sleep" in a Windows 7 or on a non-S0iX compliant Windows 8 Machine), but this power state is much more akin to your mobile phone which uses very little power but is able to pull data down (email, twitter, etc. ) and receive calls while maintaining the very low power state only resuming to full power for you to do a task then quickly enters back into Connected Standby. This is why on a S0iX system it can pull down emails, news stories and other data while in Connected Standby, it wakes up connectivity to pull data down then goes back into sleep.

So when we prevent the components from behaving in compliance with S0iX the machine can not conserve power so those peripherals when run at full power and with the Marvel Chips on our machines they combine WLAN (A,B,G,N), Bluetooth 4.0 and Miracast all on the same chip. Each component affects the others ability to behave. I noticed that in 8.1 you are unable to check the power management tab on the WLAN.

Some of the issues the RT and Pro devices have had with Windows 8/RT WLAN and Bluetooth was due to the fact that Miracast was disabled in software but still proclaimed its existence using the Plug and Play Protocols (you see the evidence as PowerState Faults pointing to the Marvel Card in the events viewer).


The bottom line with SoC Systems is that are great for people who are unaware (treat computing devices like appliances) or who will accept that there is very little to no tweaking if you want it to perform to promised spec. Enthusiasts, Old School IT Support and Developers, The Registry, Services and Device Manager Tweakers and generally anyone thinks they know better than Microsoft, Intel/OEMs and ARM ODM/OEMs are going to be generally frustrated and pissed because all of the tricks and tweaks they love to brag about will actually harm their performance and those who read their blogs.

S0iX SoC Systems use very tightly integrated components that are designed to behave in a specific way to maximize battery.

 

[beman39]

aaahh ok kool, thanks for the info, very interesting....

 

[machistmo]

Funny that 8.1 seemed to resolve a similar issue for my ThinkPad Tablet2 at work but the battery life issue is there with Bluetooth off and somewhat even without adjusting the BT setting. Battery life overall seems negatively impacted, but you know something, I couldn't care less. 8.1 seems to me to be proof that Microsoft is FINALLY 'getting it' and that makes the battery issues, which they have already acknowledged as being targeted for resolution in the live 8.1 drop, really not bother me at all.

ThinkPad Tablet2's (several at work) had been refusing to Wake from connected standby at all. Add FortiClient to the unit, v4.02 (I know, I know. I did not choose this solution) and the no wake from sleep(CS) changed to a crash requiring power button-voodoo-mojo-magic to get the machine to come on again. I am seriously talking about holding it down once the EXACT right amount of 4 to 6 seconds, releasing and then touching it Exactly the right amount of regular 'on' duration to get the little green light to appear below the front facing camera and lift-off! Man was this ever annoying. I seem to remember the head of Intel and Ballmer playing the blame game on this one about this time last year. Either way, SO FAR, so good with that issue. We thought we saw this again recently with my co-workers new tablet and I was worried for a minute but it was just him having let the battery die. I was so glad to see the bios power warning when I tossed it in my dock.

The new 8.1 gives me a level confidence with the tablets that I have not had before with this Windows8 or any of the 3 devices I have owned and used as production machines so far. Having Staged 15 or so of these tablets for a pilot program and seeing each of them display the exact same behavior I was beginning to lose faith in Windows 8 tablets. We had 3 Surface RT's in for testing, I owned my own private RT and then later a Surface Pro. All of my experiences with the devices and the Original release of Windows 8 was negative. No one in our group at work even wanted to look at the RT. I gave my RT to a co-worker who is normally a gadget fiend, he has not even mentioned it since. The pilot involves equal numbers of iPad 4's and ThinkPad Tablet2 devices. I am soley responsible for the support of all of them and to date have recorded 5 requests, all to reset passwords on the Tablet 2's. This would indicate the most of the pilot users are simply not using the Windows devices. At some point soon, the Ipad and Windows device groups will be ordered to swap devices. I just hope that 8.1 will have dropped live by that time so I can restage them and feel a little better about actually supporting these devices in the field, as tools, not toys. We never hear any complaints from the iPad 4 group but I am guessing that's because people don't care that much if they are actually a tool or not and just use them even if not for work purposes.

 

[beman39]

but what I don't get is why they're not accepting (or wanting to even look at) the RT? think maybe they been brainwashed by the Isheep masses? what can they NOT do on the RT that they can do on the ipad? yes there is more apps on the app store but the question is that wouldn't they be more productive on an RT given the fact they all work on windows platform at work so therefore there is a more symbiotic (or synergy) relationship? to me its just about being stubborn or brainwashed and if they had an more open mind they would see the RT being a better choice....but that's just me lol

 

[machistmo]

Well the Tegra3 is rather dated and is a little sluggish. Its nice for games like Dredd Vs Zombies but not much else. I dont know about WoA as a whole but they seem to be commited to it or need to be commited, one of the two.