Isn't Microsoft embarrassed about this? This has been an issue for my last two laptops over the last 5 years. How is it acceptable for this problem to still exist?
My Lenovo supports S3 sleep, but I didn't discover it until probably a year into having bought it, so at that point my battery's ability to hold charge had already been sufficiently degraded, to the point where I'm having to charge this thing every day when I'm mostly only using it for basic web browsing.
I will never buy another Windows laptop, and if Visual Studio ran on Mac I'd probably switch my PC out also. I'm not a mac guy, I find MacOS fairly unintuitive, and really hate the placement of the Ctrl key, but at this point it's clear that Apple's model better lends itself to quality, and I'm sick of all the broken crap that is deemed acceptable in the Windows world.
As I was typing this, a great example of said broken crap, is Lenovo popping up a MessageBox asking me to reboot to update my firmware. Didn't software developers all agree well over a decade ago that windows stealing focus was not a good thing? So why then is a top of the line brand in the PC world writing shit like this?
Before, I simply removed my battery when plugged in all day and significantly extended my battery life. If I needed it, it was mostly charged. It would of course dissipate over time so if I had any plans of using my laptop in an actual mobile fashion or wanted to move my laptop from one long term power source to the next, I'd pop it in, make the move and pop it back out. I of course lost the UPS feature having a laptop with a battery pack also served but I could assess when I thought my power source was/wasn't stable and pop the battery in under those conditions (not very often).
Most people I know use laptops as portable workstations. If you frequently operate in situations where you desire battery alone then the OS charge management works quite well. I don't and most people I know don't. In today's world, mos the use cases I operate under those conditions are better served by my smartphone.
Also, true power off guarantees nobody is remotely activating eavesdropping on your device.
C:\Programs\SP107705\BIOSConfigUtility64.exe /setvalue:"Battery Health Manager","Maximize my battery health"
C:\Programs\SP107705\BIOSConfigUtility64.exe /setvalue:"Battery Health Manager","Let HP manage my battery charging"
sudo tlp setcharge $start_precent $stop_percent BAT0
I've had my Lenovo carbon x1 for a few years set to 80% max charge and its battery life is still good.
Battery stats report 480 charging cycles, capacity has dropped only 8 percent from rated.
If you charge to 50% and keep it there, it basically last years.
If you use your notebook primarily on AC, battery is charged and kept on “storage” until you unplug from AC. Over the years, this is equivalent to a battery stored on a box.
So, time stored on a box with 50% is better than 80%, which is also better than 100%.
But. If your notebook is used primarily unplugged from AC, that 100% is better than 80%, because you’ll have fewer deeper discharges.
Deep discharges is what form dentrites. Dentrities is what kill lithium batteries.
I'm not sure what you mean, by default most laptops will charge to 100% and keep trickle charging it to that level consistently while on AC.
Setting a charge max of 40% would be ideal, but there is point where you want to maintain some level of runtime when removed from AC, so 80% is a reasonable compromise.
Its the same with batteries, you keep them at 100% constantly they will wear out. Its just a limitation of the technology.
Some devices now try and use "machine learning" to determine max charge, for example iphones will maintain a medium charge throughout the night then do a final top up charge to reach 100% just before you wake up.
Yes, of course. That's not the issue, though.
> Some devices now try and use "machine learning" to determine max charge, for example iphones will maintain a medium charge throughout the night then do a final top up charge to reach 100% just before you wake up.
That's different and even opposite from advertising X max charge and only delivering 80% of X as the max charge. What I referred to is a bait and switch, where the manufacturer advertises one thing but provides another. Your example justification, however, is not a bait and switch but aligns the technical MVPs and marketing promises.
The situation is similar to purchasing a fridge that only operates at 80%. All food spoils more quickly, but the fridge lasts longer. If that had been disclosed, instead of the opposite implication from the marketing, then consumers would have almsot certainly made different purchasing decisions. That is why these sorts of things are generally illegal.
In your car example, if a car is advertised with 400 HP but never goes above 320 HP, that's called false advertising. Sure, the engine can get to 400 HP tested on a bench, but that's not why the car was purchased.
Consumers can either accept this and pay for a new battery every few years, or if they want they can limit to 80% and get way longer life battery life if they can live with the reduced runtime.
I'm not aware of any vendors claiming x capacity battery with mandatory limiting charging to 80% of x, rather its an option you have the choice to explicitly enable.
Yeah, I was astounded when I recently found out about the "modern standby" idiocy. I've almost always used Mac laptops, but I just assumed that at some point in the last 20 years the PC world would figure out reliable sleep. And it seems like they mostly did, and then Microsoft broke it for no good reason?
My phone (a oneplus 6) can be on standby for nearly a week. That windows laptops attempt at this mode drains the battery by the end of a workday is just pathetic. Instant resume should be available with no practical compromises.
Just as a data point, my 2019 mac sleeps perfectly for multiple days, no problem.
Don't think that MacOS spares you about that either. Update notifications are equally distracting.
You're right but if I recall correctly notifications do not steal the focus.
"It's OK when we do it"
While commuting back and forth to work those are definitely asleep in a bag/briefcase.
Macs used to be really customiseable, and they haven't got around to ripping all of that out yet.
System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys
You can control how the various keys behave.
Not sure if it supports all the features you need, but it exists.
Much better off using Rider (also works nicely on Linux).
Microsoft has never been good at naming things. They made that mess of Windows naming at multiple points and they are still making a mess with the Xbox brand.
Do Microsoft Surface devices have this problem (the heat/fans spinning/high battery drain while sleeping, I mean)? If not, then Microsoft has no need to be embarrassed; it’s the rest of the PC laptop industry that should be embarrassed for not shipping hardware that does the right thing when the OS asks it to.
(Though, I mean, the rest of the PC industry should already be embarrassed, for still shipping new PCs in 2021 that don’t have Thunderbolt/USB4 ports, and desktop PCs that don’t even have a single USB-C port.)
There’s also the fact that Microsoft is (perhaps by accident of fate) “building for the future”; a lot of Windows 11’s assumptions in particular make sense given hardware and CPU steppings in mind that should have shipped a year ago, but which are caught in the COVID logistical conga-line and so won’t be seen for another year. That includes e.g. Intel CPUs with ARM-like big/LITTLE designs.
It's not a 50/50 responsibility split, but it's definitely not 100% on hardware.
Visual Studio Code does. Is that the same?
Even has native M1 support.
It is pretty good though. It's enjoying a big surge in popularity lately and seems to deserve it.
If you want to make Windows apps, it just doesn't support that scenario.
It is! What do you mean? :)
For all the people downvoting. He is the equivalent of people making "screenshots" with their mobile phone instead of using printscrn. I bet you are complaining about your own users all the time and here you defend someone who can't even be bothered to look at the options he has. smh
Unfortunately, even in S3 sleep, the battery would drain in a day.
I am now back to a MacBook Air (M1) and sleep works perfectly. Life is to short to deal with the terrible state of sleep on Windows/Linux laptops.
I have a Ryzen ThinkPad p14s with Linux. What you do is turn on S3 mode (they call it "Linux") in BIOS as you did. Then in /etc/systemd/sleep.conf you enable AllowSuspendThenHibernate. You can adjust the time. I have mine set to 30 minutes. I also have suspend set when the laptop lid closes. Which means when I close the laptop, it suspends for 30 minutes. If I open before 30 minutes, it resumes right away. If not, it hibernates. The battery will last for practically days if you configure it this way.
You have to configure Linux to hibernate and this will depend on your setup. Just know that it is possible to use LUKS encryption and hibernate to a file (or partition).
Another factor with my Macbook is that it seems to automatically resume from hibernate in the morning. Not sure what it's doing. Maybe it's keeping track of when I typically open my laptop. But you can get this same behavior on Linux with rtcwake. If using LUKS though, you'll probably need to use a keyfile rather than a passphrase for this to work. It would be neat if someone wrote a program that could monitor the time you open the laptop and automatically adjust the rtc wakeup times based on historical data.
Actually, as far as I understand it's a mixture like modern sleep in Windows. Like modern sleep, the system also wakes up to fetch e-mail, calendar events, etc. But in contrast to Windows, it actually works well and is very restrictive (only certain whitelisted apps can update). Apple calls it Power Nap:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-power-nap-m...
Which means when I close the laptop, it suspends for 30 minutes. If I open before 30 minutes, it resumes right away. If not, it hibernates. The battery will last for practically days if you configure it this way
I know, but hibernate on Linux has many issues. First of all, properly restoring hardware state is even more of a hit and miss than S3 sleep (where e.g. the trackpad would often not come up correctly).
Hibernate on Linux also has all kinds of security issues. Hibernate currently does not work with Secure Boot + kernel_lockdown [1]. Hibernate with randomly-keyed encrypted swap requires all kinds of workarounds.
I am not willing to forgo security mechanisms that have been supported for some time on other systems.
It doesn't have anything to do with the processor does it? Surely neither intel nor amd have removed S3 support?
AFAIK it's integrators (motivated by Microsoft's push of "modern standby"?) which make it unavailable in their bioses: S3 needs bios integration, modern standby is just S0. Or do you mean "hopefully AMD will have a better S0 idle"?
So you mean Microsoft can force your laptop to restart and lose all your work even when it's "off"? Amazing.
That being said, I hate this, with my old laptop I could close the lid and pop it in the bag and it would lose maybe 5-10% battery per day, with new laptop it happily unsleeps itself in the bag which has zero ventilation.
So for safety reasons I have to shut my laptop down before putting it in my bag, then have to wait for it to start up (which is slow due to corporate software) before being able to use it again.
(Never liked not having the sleep/hibernate choice on macOS. I know better than the computer what my upcoming plans are!)
Sleep was a suspend/hibernate hybrid that allowed fast restarts if you still had power, but would restore from disk hibernate-style if you ran out of power while suspended.
My experiences with macOS involved tons of unexpected sharp corners like that. Really feels half-finished when you're coming from Linux, as ironic as that sounds
Modern standby was designed for ARM-based Windows 10 Mobile initially, but I do feel that Intel had plead to Microsoft to allow them to implement it too. Regardless, even the best Intel cores (except for their clean-room Atom designs, not all Atom-branded CPUs have these) runs hot that it's a disgrace that Microsoft haven't insisted on requiring S3 sleep.
For mine it's under Config // Power // Sleep State. Windows 10 means useless Modern Standby, Linux means S3. https://i.imgur.com/Y5CchL9.png
In this covid helped me because I learned about this before I cooked my expensive new laptop in its bag :(
Type
powercfg -a
and see:
The following sleep states are available on this system:
Standby (S3)
I'll have to try powercfg next time I boot into Windows.
You start with a laptop at 80% charged if you use Microsofts stupid system. The more I use Linux, the more annoyed I get at Microsoft and how they keep worsening the entire pc experience every year.
Users are not users, they are cattle to be managed by Microsoft.
Sorry, long time Linux user here. I just presumed the sucky state of this sort of thing was SOLELY due to my insistence on using Linux.
Relatedly; seriously - besides the obvious "mindshare" and so on, and I suppose "mostly for the people here;" Macs I get, but why do people still use Windows?
I don't think it was actually installing updates (I use Enterprise eds), though I've no idea what it was doing. I've since started leaving it plugged in on my desk, and haven't noticed it turning itself on at all since then. Weird.
Seems mad they'd try to install updates while not on AC power, and I'd think it's fairly common for sleeping laptops to be placed in a bag overnight.
(Other than this I do actually quite like my XPS. Though I do wish I had gone without the touchscreen. It's just annoying because you can't wipe grime off without it causing a touch.
(Also, why does your post show as being made on the 2021-10-14 when this "Ask HN" is from today? Wat)
Intel diasabled S3 in Tiger Lake
If your laptop supports that, you can close the lid and it will power ~everything except the RAM down (sometimes a USB port still charges). In 'new' laptops, including almost everything Tiger lake and Intel, S3 is being phased out for Microsoft's "Modern Standby", known as S0ix (or sometimes InstantGo). This is much more like a mobile phone, where it stays on but attempts to use as little battery as possible.
So, peripherals might shut down, but you might still be able to get critical Windows Updates or receive an important notification -- all while your laptop is unplugged, lid closed, in your bag overnight. This is pretty bad for heat, battery, and often not what you might expect. My new laptop uses about 15% battery overnight, just doing nothing.
In the future, perhaps this mode will work as well as S3 used to for battery life, but finding your laptop fans on while it's closed inside your bag and getting really hot is not fun. This applies to lots of laptops currently.
2. A good screen. Brightness that goes high enough to be seen outside (400, or more) - and it'll usually auto turn down the rest of the time to save battery. Hard to go wrong on a Mac, but really variable screen quality across other brands and models. You'll spend a lot of time looking at the screen.