Hi All, I am using Windows 8.1 since it came. But I am seeing that battery life of my laptop in general is very less than that compared to Windows 8. Are you guys seeing similar issues? I saw that Windows 8.1 preview for Surface RT had some issues . But as what we have is supposed to be RTM , I was expecting it to have better or atleast same battery life. Can this issue be caused because I installed drivers for windows 8 ? But I don't think that those driver might be causing this issue.
Did you changed your Power Plan? Or, it's maybe possible, MS has changed the Power Plan. Fact is, if Windows (7,8,8.1) is running on Laptops and Tablets, the power consumption of the CPU and also the Monitor and WiFi, consume a lot of Battery Power and will be handled by the Power Plan which "clock's" down the CPU if the machine run on Battery. That will keep the time usage up. If that Power Plan were changed by MS or even the user, the use of Battery time will be less. As Windows 8.1 (also 8) is "promoting" that fast booting time, on point could be that MS has changed the Clock "adjustment" of the CPU for to run on higher (if not full) Clock Speed. I've the same outcome on my Laptop and noticed that the Clock Speed is more up by at least 25-30% compare to Windows 7 and the Battery usage is down by about by 30-40%. I don't mind about that, I use direct power all times if possible.
I do agree that battery consumption will be higher when going from Windows 7 to 8. But there doesn't seem to be reason to get considerably lower battery when going from Windows 8 to 8.1 if we see at improvements that it brings. I was just curious if this is bug as seen on WinRT 8.1 preview build. I too try to be always connected to power source whenever possible but at times its not possible .
For Windows RT 8.1 battery draining issue, enable Bluetooth if it is disabled. Unlike old phones, the tablet uses Bluetooth LE, which almost does not consume energy if not actually used. Enable it and disable discovery if concerned. The battery drain offender is the UART that drains the battery if the Bluetooth radio is not active, because UART constantly tries to query the presence of the radio, but failing.
Yes but do you think such behavior is possible in laptops ? As this is generic build and results might defer hardware wise , I just wanted to know from MDL guys whether they are seeing similar symptoms. I am not concerned much as I can also stay connected to power supply but when I am travelling this might create some problems.
Connected Standby mode not possible because x86/64 can only Sleep (so powercfg /sleepstudy command will not work, use /energy and /batteryreport). Other hardware issues highly depend on the chipset configuration of a specific laptop in question (as not being a SoC, ARM nuances don't apply in full). Some systems use an internal USB bus for the communication radios cards (BT/WiFi/3G/4G...), some may use a direct UART, some may use other way (like a PCI bus). Depends. Also depends how the system is operating with all these drivers, devices, HAL and the driver model. Likewise Windows 8.0 system drivers may not work in 8.1 the same way they worked in 8.0, because some driver-related nuances were changed in the core of the OS. Windows 8.1 isn't GA yet, and there is no official full driver support for older devices. And yes, like pisthai said, it depends on how the power plan is configured as well.
I am running win 8.1on my hp sleekbook, after upgrading from win 8. Since the upgrade my battery life is almost reduced by half. The power plan I use is the same I used before...hp recomended. What could be the reason?