HP Spectre 13T-3000

I was just browsing the HP Store and there does not appear to be an i7 option for the 13t-3000? Has anyone else noticed this?

Jim

 

Five hours of battery life sounds low. I have two tests where I log time powered on for every session from 100% battery until black screen. One test with the CPU throttled to about 0.8 GHz gave 8 hr 48 minutes. A second test with CPU ranging between 0.8GHz to 2.6 GHz gave 7 hr 37 minutes. Use was web, Email, card games, etc.

Jim

 

Is that FHD or QHD?

 

My bad! FHD screen. I have brightness at 64%.

Jim

 

OP

Then people should ask the question *why* and actually *read* my posts. As far as umbrage, I welcome the discussion for those who can rationally justify their position since in the end it will ultimately help others. I have no vested interest in what people end up with.

For better or worse, I have taken *a lot* of time to examine both the XPS 13 and HP Spectre 13T-3000, via reviews, personal experience (have used both) and following the associated NotebookReview user forums.

Having closely followed *this* particular thread, I have come to my own conclusions, which I had the audacity to believe might be helpful to others. There are valid reasons to prefer one or the other and I have thrown out my own personal opinions. They are both solid machines.

My intent was not to inflame, but to inform. This *was not* a fly by trolling expedition. When I was initially looking for ultrabooks, the best information I came across came from *actual* users.

Believe it or not, this thread is monitored by those who have not yet purchased an ultrabook. For months, the HP represented the best value. With the price of the XPS 13 finally coming down to the same (or even cheaper levels [e.g. Microsoft Store $899]) it is now a viable alternative. In the end, all the haswell based notebooks (under the covers) are more similar than they are different, springing from the original Intel reference designs. Like pretty much any technology, you will find something cheaper and better immediately after you make the decision to buy something

Again it was not meant to come off that way. Given the money involved, my long wait and all the ultrabook issues (across all vendors), I was just extremely happy that things worked out the way they did for me. There were just too many horror stories.

In the end, I looked across the entire haswell based ultrabook universe and the HP Spectre 13T-3000 and XPS 13 were the ones that ended up on the top, representing the best value. YMMV

 

If you are going to reply, use the * entire quote*:

If you go *strictly* by the MFG, HP is dead last.
Computer Manufacturers Ranked: How to Pick a Laptop That Won't Fail

Unfortunately, you have to look specifically at each model line.

 

I think you made your best decision for the use you will do to your tool (laptop), but if you want to help others, don't write misleading information as you did because in this way is really difficult to take you seriously

 

I think you have some kind of difficulty, read my post again paying attention and dont write wrong conclusions as you are doing more than once.

 

Enough is enough. Unless you want to speak to *specific* issues, take it to PM.

 

I think you are wise to "end" this "discussion."

If this thread was a "What Notebook Should I Buy?" thread, your inputs would have been appropriate. For a thread primarily made up of owners - who very, very rarely have had what you called "horror stories" - I think it was inappropriate to write what primarily sounded (even if not intentionally so) like you wanted to evoke envy because, six months after this computer was selling for $400-$800 less than all competitors, including the XPS 13. With time, all purchases will look less advantageous as technology costs inevitably fall; doesn't make it classy to tell people had they waited 6 months they could have gotten more for their money.

 

Thanks. The method worked. Apparently it was Intel CPPC driver.

 

Thanks. The suggested method worked. Apparently it was the Intel CPPC Driver.

 

Can't really agree with your conclusions, but at least they are rational. Look through the thread. There are a lots of returns/issues. Every ultrabook was affected in one way or another. HP like Dell also loved to play pricing games. *Any* technology you bought *6 months* ago will look like a raw deal. Just take a look at SSDs. That is the nature of tech. That said at any given point, people need to look at the current market. My guess is that 6 months from *now* there will be *much* better deals than *both* the HP Spectre 13T-3000 and XPS 13. This has happened with *every* bit of computer tech that I have bought. Gee, that $3000 original IBM PC doesn't sound too good now does it

 

For better or worse, have had to go that route several times myself

Nothing is worse than a device manager that isn't clean

Glad it worked out for you.

 

Gone through another battery cycle and the laptop gave me around 5 hours 45 minutes (100% to 0% - not in one go) with the same kind of usage and settings as before, however running at 1920x1080 instead of 1440p to see if this has any effect on battery. It seems to have a minor effect, but still not what I had wanted. Will try to disable CoolSense and the Intel CPPC to see how much I can squeeze from this battery at most.

 

It's not related to which screen you have. That's a fallacy going around; I'll document that later but trust me, neither which screen you have nor what resolution you set it to has a measurable effect on battery life. I've had my QHD i7 for 3 months and my experience ranges from 4 hrs to 7 hrs. There are so many things that effect battery life - screen brightness being by far the most significant but other factors play major roles too. Check out the review on notebookcheck. net; they test an i7 with QHD. I believe their range is 2:12 to 6:41. Most every other review tested an i5, which probably does add 30-45 mins vs the i7 (tho I've seen that knocked as overstatement too). But every professional review uses a different protocol, which matters far more than cpu, certainly than screen resolution, thus results range from a low of 6:41 for an i7 and a high of 8/8.5 testing an i5. I have never been able to match a published review's battery time (on any of a dozen laptops over past 3 yrs!), but notebookcheck's ("Nbc") numbers are closest to what I get- 2:12 hrs under max load (just in torture test, no real life usage) and 6:41 for combo of tasks with wifi on and brightness at, I think, 50%. Note: Nbc reports that these low-ish sounding times are higher than they measure other main Haswell i7 competition (Acer S7, Asus UX 301), for which I've also seen numbers in the 7-8 hr range reported elsewhere. Talk about "YMMV!" Has anyone ever gotten EPA mileage on their car?

Back to your situation, @5:45 you're about an hour shy of what I get for somewhat aggressive middle of road use case. That is probably close enough that your hour gap could easily be explained by a combo of settings and specific tasks, but a case could be made that you have a hardware defect or major driver issue(s) because almost every prof review - and my own experience - gets 1-2 hrs more than you do. Almost all reviews say the batt life of spectre 13t w/i5, 4gb, 128gb is second only to MBA, (running OSX only) among all Haswell ultraboks, (without auxiliary batteries). It's hard to swallow that your experience with slightly higher config is so disappointing.

I'd love it if someone smarter than I could suggest an easy-to-duplicate test** for us all to run and report in numbers and ee can see how much "real" variation there is and if it's explained un part or whole by config. (**eg, only one or two tasks, settings at common, energy - aware levels, say 40% brightness, screen goes dark after 3 minutes inactivity, CPPC on and set to max energy savings, etc.

Can someone savvy enough to set parameters and the simplest to administer test so we can get our arms around this?

EDIT: this quote, from less than top rate PC Mag, will blow you away:

"Where the HP Spectre 13T-3000 did particularly well was battery life. With an internal 4-cell Lithium Ion battery, the Spectre 13T-3000 lasted just shy of 9 hours (8:58) in our timed battery rundown test. The competing systems all fell behind—the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus (8:15) and the Acer Aspire S7-392-6411 (8:22) both came close—though everything takes second place to the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Mid-2013), which lasted an impressive 11:26. Despite this, the Spectre 13T-3000 is actually one of the longest-lived of any of the premium ultrabooks."

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There is a battery life test on the web called Peacekeeper. You just go to the site and run the test. You need to make changes to your settings so your PC doesn't go to sleep . The test is a little more aggressive than my normal use but it gives consistent results.

Regards, Jim

 

EDIT: Before you get too excited about my great idea, below, got a problem: can't get Peacekeeper to run on my Spectre 13!!! Help, please. (I want to enable us all to run a battery test program and I will compile scores and report back averages by config, etc. But first, need to get the battery benchmark to work! If anyone can help with this, I will do the rest. Thanks, Jeff/LL

Jim, thank you for the quick and excellent response. Do the test instructions for Peacekeeper provide suggested settings beyond those to prevent the computer from sleeping but also standards at which to to set everything from screen brightness to cpu min/max % settings, inactivity minutes to screen shutoff (not to sleep, just to turn off the backlight, which could make a big difference in power consumption) , etc - all such settings that could otherwise skew case-to-case results and make comparisons between Spectre 13t owners less valid? If the test instructions don't include such settings, would you be willing to suggest a list of settings and levels to set them at so we could get results to compare across all those who wish to participate?

If you could help by recommending these other settings, I will set up a new thread where people can report their Peacekeeper scores and I will keep a running tally of statistics - avg, median, min, max, and those same stats segregated by major configuration differences (cpu, screen, RAM, gender, age, weight, carnivore/vegetarian/vegan - Whoops, guess I got carried away as a statistics nerd! I'll only calculate stats segregated by first three categories .

This will be fun - er, I mean, helpful, to understand what to realistically expect for battery life, depending upon your configuration.

Seriously, I think we can all learn from the results and to validate those things that matter and put to rest beliefs about things that don't affect battery life. I will spearhead this but I will ask for help when I need it. First off, I'll need those other settings (if Jim/Hawkeye responds with a starting list, anyone who wants to add variables to test for please feel free to suggest others. Also, feel free to suggest other data to collect and report back on - as long as we're surveying users may as well ask for anything useful, because this will happen only once!

(If I sound like a guy with too much time on my hands, you're right! I'm recovering from ankle surgery and can't walk fir 4 more weeks.)

Best,
Jeff /LL

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Hi Jeff,

Peacekeeper runs on my 13t-3000 with no issues. What browser are you using? The battery test is at the bottom of the page. The test at the top of the page is a browser test. The battery test goes through the same screens as the browser test, but when it gets to the results screen, it starts over and keeps repeating until your battery gives out.

I like your idea, now if we could get Peacekeeper to run on your machine.:hi2:

Regards, Jim

 

One thing to wonder about is how many of these test review sites had spectres that were throttling back and not using their full turbo? That seemed to be a fairly consistent issue with users on these threads, and looking at the other benchmark tests, it does seem that many of the review sites had machines that were throttling early. Just a thought. A benchmarking program that offered some more standardize tests like what has been mentioned would be really nice, if only the review sites would do something similar.

in case no one saw, you can once again order with the I7 option, it was missing for a least a week.

 

Yes, the Spectre 13 throttling issue surely affected benchmarks,

I see the i7 back for the configurable version, but the pre-configured discounted version still has only the i5.

Regards, Jim

 

I would suspect the i7 version will become the discounted version in a week or so.

Also, I was considering this as a new office/home machine and the business rep on the phone told me that it was not a business machine and was not made to be used like that. He said that the consumer machines were only made to be used on average 3 hours/day or some such. That sounds weird to me because this compares favorably well to the Dell XPS 13 and to the macbook air, both of which are considered office build quality. You can get the XPS line through Dell's office site, and apparently the XPS 15 is identical to the M3800. Does anyone have any thoughts, or any experience with this?
My old machine is an XPS M1330 that has been running for 6+ years, and I would like another machine to last at least 4. I use the machine every day, probably 8 hours + depending. I plug in to an external monitor at home and work, and use an extended desktop mode for more real estate.
Will the U class processor be the limiting factor in a few years? Or will it likely keep working just fine?
I do some presenting, sometimes with embedded video, I use LOGOS software, which says they want 1GB dedicated ram, but macbook airs work just fine, and other than that I occasionally play magic online.

If you think this is a durable, business class machine, or know that it is, I would love to hear that, as it would reassure me. Otherwise I may have to turn to the XPS 13 or 15 if I need the M class processor. And I really liked the HP when I tried it in the store, and my wife has last year's model as provided by her work (she's an in home hospice nurse).

Thank you for your help!

 

I don't know why a HP rep would have told you that. I think the business class machines have the same processor, memory, etc. as the ":consumer" class machines. Business class machines tend to have more ports and security features and a more heavy duty build (more weight).

Regards, Jim

 

The sales rep has little o no acknowledge...
Just to tell you something, the i7 model is the only model that HP sells in México, so I dont think it will be discontinued soon.
For the other side, "business machine" its only a marketing term, each one buys the pc depending on their needs, you could use the computer all the hours you need, there is not limitation on that...
I dont think for the use you do you will have to buy a new computer in the next 4 years...
U class processors are because are low voltage, the performance of them a very good, I even run virtual machines on my i7
The video memory that comes with my lap is 1.8GB of ram.
Personally I suggest to you to forget about the crap marketing terms about business, premium, home, etc, if I have to choose the computer for you I will choose the model with core i7, 8 GB of ram and FHD display.
About the macbooks I can not tell you so much because I dont like the OSX and if you plan to install W8.1 with bootcamp better buy a Commodore 64...

 

The best value has always had the i5 configuration, and is rarely affected by discount coupons. There is currently a $250 off coupon (SAVE250HP) working if you want to buy the i7 custom configured version. I am very close to finally pulling the trigger on this, because I will be travelling to the US at the end of this month, so the spectre should arrive pretty much at the same time as me

 

Where do you find the discount coupons? Every time In do a search, I come up with BS.

Thanks, Jim

 

I have found this link to be very accurate regarding coupons: HP Coupons - Save with a May 2014 HP Coupon Code or HP Coupon

 

My first thoughts are to start simple. First, screen shut off time does not matter. Peacekeeper has enough activity that the display never shuts off. Maybe it also never sleeps, I don't know because I never use sleep. Anyway, Three conditions to specify would be no sleep and no backlight. Second, set screen brightness to 50%. Third, start a Task Manager > Performance window at the beginning and record the max and min CPU speed that occurs during the first series of screens. Then close the Task Manager window and let Peacekeeper continue to run your battery down.

Reported data should include: hrs on battery, CPU (i5 or i7), Max and Min CPU speed, Display Res (QHD or FHD), Screen Brightness and RAM.

This is just a start. Any suggestions welcome.

Regards, Jim

 

Personally I dont get it, why is the sense of doing that kind of benchmark?... could it be a reference for a day by day use? the answer is not... some with hard use will get 3 hours, other 5, other 8, etc...
as I know, this lap comes with a bit less 7000 mah battery, most of the chipset in the market are more and less identical, the power management is more and less the same, the difference is done in the panel, some panels consumes more power than others, etc... don't expect magic...

 

I think people who are not getting the battery life they would like may gain insight into how to get more. And people who wonder how a change in their settings would affect their battery life, may get a cue.

Jim

 

Does anyone from Canada have any luck/experience ordering this laptop from the US HP site?

I really want a customized HP Spectre, but I live near Toronto, Canada. I have relatives who I could get it shipped to in the US, as well as access to a near the border delivery receiving business. However, when I try to select a billing address, only US options are available and if it doesn't match my Canadian credit card's info, I assume there will be a problem?. I suppose I could have my relatives buy it for me and I pay them back, but I'd rather not have them front me temporarily if possible.

Any help/advice?

 

I live outside of Ottawa and across the St. Lawrence River is Ogdensburg, NY, a little over an hour's drive away.There, the UPS Store allows Canadians to ship items to that location by using your own name on top of the store's address. They charge $5 per item per week. They even have a separate website to check if your package has arrived. The place is always full of Canadians on weekends, there to pick up what Amazon or other US websites won't or can't ship to Canada. Just declare at the border the cost of your purchases and pay the HST.

In my Amazon.com user account I have my VISA card with my Canadian billing address, but have purchases shipped to the Ogdensburg UPS store. Perhaps you can do the same, but closer to Toronto. Amazon is huge and even if an item is not sold directly by Amazon, their partners will use your Amazon registered payment method. For example, I have order replacement parts for my Spectre 13 from DEC Trader via Amazon.com. Good luck.

 

Jim,
This is good and I can now report that I can run Peacekeepers (the problem was with Firefox' popup blocker, but yesterday and today have been so crazy I literally haven't had the time to run it through, two or three times to insure consistency. Tomorrow will be the charm .

As for the data you suggested I get reports to analyze, like them - and thank you - but a couple questions / suggestions :

1) I think I should suggest participants standardize on certain settings and they should include brightness setting (I'd suggest right in the middle; may o be 50%of Max brightness, but would be constant for all participants. Then, after we see the statistics of reported scores, I, or you, once we've determined our own results are near the median for our confirm, can repeat the test with brightness increased and reduced, w/CPPC installed or uninstalled (proxy for throttling question : does Peacekeepers calculate yard report back max and min cpu levels?).

2) As for sleep and screen shutoff settings, they are both adjustable and again I would think a standard setting G for all testers should be set. As you suggested the Cohen does computer sleep? " setting should be" never. "

3)Since Peacekeeper won't allow the screen to shut off during the test, that is another test we should run after results are in and we consider our Peacekeepers results consistent sufficiently to run incremental changes on, we should do that separately.

Sorry for being so verbose - as usual!

Best,
Jeff




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I'm an American expat doing business in the South Pacific. Based upon the slew of well articulated technical posts and my experience with various equipment over the years,I opted for and ordered a max spec unit a month ago for 1,104 using the POWER250 coupon.

It made land fall in the US a few days ago. The unit is being shipped to me via USPS international Express (by a colleague) for ~ 100 usd. The shipment may be flagged for customs duty (~ 250 usd) raising the price to ~1450 usd which is about what i would have paid without the discount or free HP shipping.

The unit, in my eyes, is still worth every penny and I feel extremely fortunate I was able to buy it through the American market and not here in the South Pacific where the maxed out Spectre 13 (less the AC wireless) costs ~ 2600 usd.

For those of you living outside of the US it may be worth while to research mail forwarding firms in the US where you can have US purchases sent, potentially repackaged and forwarded on.

Cheers

 

Peacekeeper doesn't report anything except hours and a lot of data on browser performance. The main focus of Peackeeper is browser performance, with the added bonus of battery life by repeating the series of activities of the browser performance test over and over.

I suggested running a Task Manager window for the first series of the tests which takes about 5 minutes to run, and watching the CPU speed to get max and min speed. Thre is so much confusion and uncertainty about throttling that I thought just reporting max and min CPU speed would be the best way to determine CPU state.

Yes, I agree that everyone should use 50% screen brightness.

I completed one test yesterday afternoon with these results. Time, 4 hrs 38 minutes, 50% brightness, min CPU .76 GHz, max CPU 2.55 GHz, my CPU i5, RAM, 4 GB. Note that I timed the test at 4 hrs 46 minutes. Peacekeeper may have a slight bias on timing due to start/stop times of the 5 minute series of tests. We should do a little work to determine if the bias is consistent. I guess Peacekeeper may use the first low battery warning as the end time or something similar.

Regards, Jim

 

I managed to find a work-around by paying through Paypal. Ended up going with i7/8gb ram/FHD display/256gb ssd/wireless AC. Felt that QHD was too small for me, as I'm used to using a 768 resolution Lenovo x220 at the moment. Hopefully it's processed, accepted, and then shipped to the US border service I'll be using.

 

So I ran Peacekeeper on my Spectre, below you can find all my data.

Model: i7 / QHD / 8GB / 256GB / Wireless AC

Power plan settings:

Turn off the display - Never
Put the computer to sleep - Never
Turn off hard disk after - 3 minutes
JavaScript Timer Frequency - Maximum Power Savings
Wireless Adapter Savings - Medium Power Saving
Intel CPPC Energy Optimization - Enabled (However please note that I had removed Intel CPPC driver)
USB selective suspend setting - Enabled
Intel Graphics Power Plan - Maximum Battery Life
Link State Power Management - Maximum power savings
Minimum processor state - 5%
System cooling policy - Active
Maximum processor state - 100%
Display brightness - 50%
Enable adaptive brightness - On
Multimedia settings when sharing media - Allow the computer to sleep
Multimedia settings when playing video - Balanced

Other things to note:

Browser: Firefox 29.0
HP CoolSense - Off
Display driver: Intel version 10.18.10.3496
Resolution: 2560x1440 (I know this is obvious in QHD, but in a previous post I had changed it to 1920x1080 in order to check if it preserves battery - and it didn't have any tangible effect)
Maximum CPU frequency during the test: 1.75 GHz
Minimum CPU frequency during the test: 0.77 GHz
Maximum CPU core temperature during the test: (59/60) - Most of the times temperatures stood at 35-45, in fact the fan rarely kicked in.

My Peacekeeper test ran for 4 hours 53 minutes - started it at 10:12 AM and laptop went to sleep at 3:05 PM (reaching the 7% critical state level).

Kindly advise me if I need to give more data so that my result can be interpreted as accurately as possible, however I'm not happy with my result.

 

I do agree. There are some fairly standardize definitions of "business" products, ranging from features ("business class will often, as hawkeye suggests, have more ports, ( vestigal ports such as Express Card to firewire, to eSATA, etc)to greater apparent durability (many run through milspec testing as a validation of their durability) but note that they often have lower spec components such as screen quality, resolution and brightness/contrast (though almost always with matte screens), audio that ranges from bad to extremely bad, missing ports for such consumer uses as plugging streaming video into an HDTV via HDMI, even Intel WIDI, etc. Such business machines often have a higher level of on-site technical support with the idea that "business" use of a computer is more mission-critical and same-day or next day on site service by a knowledgeable tech with sufficient parts inventory to repair a unit and get the user back on his/her way with a minimum of disruption. The degree to which this service is different from that which is offered (ie, on-site, same day, etc.) for purchase with "consumer" models is not clear. "Business models will generally cost a bit more to 50% more than consumer equivalents with similar configurations, but the sturdier builds and possibly more responsive service is what justifies the price difference. Best way to get a "business" class machine without paying an arm and a leg is to buy a one year old one with 2 years left on the wtty.

Going back to the Spectre 13 as a "business class" machine, on the one hand it is not because HP says it is not! That means they don't test it for heat/cold/dust, drops, etc and get milspec certification. That is not to say that the Spectre 13 wouldn't pass all or most of those tests, but they are simply not given. There is no actual test of the durability of such things as the screen, keyboard, ports, etc, and I have owned plenty of "business class" machines with frequent malfunctions of these components, to a higher degree than I am used to experienced with some consumer models. So, you were correctly informed that the Spectre 13 is not a "business class" machine according to industry standard requirements for that designation. But that doesn't mean the Spectre is not entirely appropriate for business use. My sense of my Spectre 13 is that the case is as pressure/drop durable as any I have ever used. I can't vouch for the durability of the keyboard and ports, but I don't see anything about their construction or apparent durability suggesting they are any less durable than, say, the HP Probook or Elitebook models closest in spec to the Spectre. Moreover, the cost of getting a business class machine with a screen (important for business demos to customers) close to the quality of the Spectre's requires spending some $600 to upgrade an Elitebook model to the "Dreamscreen" option, widely viewed to be the best IPS screen in the business, second to NONE. It's probably vast overkill for most even business uses, except as a workstation for those who do very precise video/photo editing. Note too that the Dreamscreen is about as subject to defects as any I have experienced, so if reliability is important for business use, the FHD or QHD on the Spectre is a better bet. Finally, the jury is out as to whether the purchase of the best onsite warranty for the Spectre would be as responsive and capable as that for the "business class" models. One could inquire of HP, but the "proof is in the pudding." Considering you can get a lighter, better looking machine with better video and audio specs (again, critical for doing customer demos) at a considerably lower price, it may well be a wiser business decision. In any event, I've tried to summarize the differences as I understand them. It is not "BS" to suggest that the Spectre is not a "business class" machine, because that has a fairly specific description and designation as noted above. But that designation tells you little about what is the best overall purchase for you particular business use. In the old days of cheap plastic consumer models, the distinction was more meaningful.

I played with a couple of different configurations to get the pre-discount price to $1,199 min. required to get the current $250 off deal and found - surprise, surprise! - that you really can't get there without putting an i7 in the configuration so you end up needing to buy pretty much the top config, and then discount it back to a little over $1,100. I would rather be able to do an i5, FHD, 8GB, 128GB (user upgradeable) config for, say, $900, but they've cut you cut off at the pass for any option that would "beat the system." Still a great deal to get it fully loaded at $1,100 but not the ideal configuration at the lowest price you would like to see. You could do really well getting the present price leader, an i5 w/128GB SSD (user-upgradeable) and FHD but that model only has 4GB not upgradeable, thus taking it out of the "serious user" realm. That said, I think a sizable majority of buyers - 50% -75% would realistically do fine with 4GB for the forseeable future, and that would make the $849 net price an absolute steal today. (If this was to be a secondary on-the-road machine for me, I would definitely buy it and save $300. Both ends (low end and high) are the best deals going today and most brands are pricing like HP so you can only get best deals at top or bottom config.

Take a look at my comment above ^ . I heartily endorse your decision! You won't be disappointed, and if you are you will have 21 days to return for full refund.

Wow! Great work, mr. inter! I would like to confer with hawkeye (our resident expert!) and see whether he thinks it might be best to run this test with any changes in settings. Nothing wrong with the settings you used, but I want to develop a database on a separate thread I will launch as soon as we have a standard set of parameters for people to run and report so I can aggregate all the results people report and try to shed some light on which things affect battery life more than others. Peacekeeper doesn't give you an accurate reading of battery life you can expect in "normal" use (whatever that means!) but it has the advantage of being consistent from user to user.

A little patience please while we figure out what makes most sense so as to avoid either getting less useful results or - heaven forbid - need to ask people to re-run the tests with different settings.

I have no basis for saying this, but I have a sinking feeling there may be a better standardized battery benchmark test out there that might better simulate "realistic" use cases. I will do some research, but please do volunteer any ideas any of you may have. I'm not saying Peacekeeper will not prove the best, easiest (and fastest to run) tool out there just to give us a sense of which parameters may be affecting battery life the most - especially configuration differences.

Best,
Jeff

 

I think that at this point it would be best to gather as many as results as possible including the settings used, like I did, and then see whether any settings in particular yield a better battery life.

 

Fairly different configuration but surprisingly close battery life, 4hrs 46 min for me, 4 hrs 53 min for mr.inter. I used the Balance power plan and my CPU had a higher max speed. Maybe the i7 didn't have wok as hard at the Peacekeeper task?

Jeff, I will leave it up to you to settle on a "standard" set of conditions. I find it interesting to see the battery life at different conditions rather than everything at the sane conditions where battery life will be almost the same. The difference between mr.inter and me is fairly large, but battery life is very close to the same.

By the way, I have done a number of manual tests where I simply log start and stop times for several "normal" use sessions while the battery goes from 100 to black screen. I find that Peacekeeper life multiplied by 1.6 to 1.7 gives my normal use battery life.

Regards, Jim

 

Doesn't make a big difference but my 4 hours 53 minutes have consumed 93% of the battery since it went to sleep with 7% remaining. By simple proportion, 100% to 0% would have given me 22 minutes more, making up 5 hours 15 minutes.

 

Yeah, I like that approach too. If everyone has the same settings, all of the results should be very similar. Not much knowledge gained.

Regards, Jim

 

I think my critical battery level is set to 5%. That may be a parameter we should make consistent.

Regards, Jim

 

But mine won't let me change this parameter for a strange reason.

 

I don't know why it won't let you make a change. It would only make a 2% difference in battery life anyway. The most interesting difference is that you are using a Power Plan for maximum battery life and I using the Balanced Plan. And you are getting longer battery life.

Regards, Jim

 

Isn't it normal that the battery life plan results in longer battery life?

 

Yes. But the difference is a lot smaller than I would have thought.

Jim

 

Has anyone had a bad keyboard? It is hard to tell if my keyboard is bad or it is just the way it is. I notice certain keys like "e" I need to hit harder than other keys to work. It is frustrating but I could live with it if that is the way it is for others too. I would hate to go through returning the machine just to have the same issue with the next one.

If you return do they cross ship a new one? If so after you receive a new one how long do you have to return the old laptop?

 

Hi guys, I'm hours away from pulling the trigger on the Italian spectre 13-3001el.

I've read the reviews and everything looks good, I've started going through this thread but it will take a long time.

Can you sum up what I should know before buying it?

 

I've noticed the same thing on ours. 'e' and 'd' seem to be the worst for some reason.