Do you keep your Bluetooth Adapter on at all times?

I recall that about 3 years ago I found that Bluetooth did cause a significant increase in power drain due to increased CPU activity, but maybe the driver / software have improved since then.

Can someone who has the Bluetooth hardware (I don't) check the battery power drain (using RMClock or similar) on idle both with and without Bluetooth enabled?

John

 

i dont really notice much of a power drain with bluetooth on. in fact, if i enable all the low level power saving features in DCP, like lower refresh rate, lower screen brightness, smartcard and contactless smartcard reader off, etc, i only get about 30 mins more battery life, and thats from really squeezing everything to low.

and is it just me or does it power off automatically when not in use? thats what happens on mine.

 

I think you're right. Mine's switched off now while i boot with BT on. Actually...the light is off but the icon is still in the system tray, when i select the icon the light comes back on. I guess it sets itself to "not active" or something when not in use?

 

the BT light was off, on my phone i selected "beam file". It found the M4400, when i selected the M4400 to send to it, the icon lit up and the transfer wizard started. i then cancelled the transfer and the light went back off.

is it a low power state, or does it mean its not set to discoverable (the phone and laptop were already paired)? not too sure.

 

think we can only find out by checking with an app that monitors power usage of components or something. Don't know of one that would do it though. And, while curious ofcourse, i'm not interested enough to go and look for one i know, i know, christmas made me lazy....and fat