Power consumption when on StandBy.

Hi,

i started to not shutdown my machine but put it on StandBy instead. So, i observed that it consumed about 24% of my battery per day int that mode, 1% per hour more or less.

Do you encounter same numbers(for those of you that you use StandBy) ?

 

why not hibernate?

 

That is normal. Standby is putting your computer into a very lower power state because it has to maintain the HDD info in the RAM. Hibernation is the mode you want to put it in if you don't want any power consumption, but hibernation require HDD space.

 

There is one thing to consider.....Some services will wake the computer from standby if they are set to do so...or so I've heard some people here say so. Someone here had that problem, his computer would wake from standby while in the case causing a potentially hazardous situation....something to think about.

 

Hibernation becomes more and more "obsolete" with OS like Vista. When returning from hib, Superfetch tries to do it's magic and this takes some time and hdd activity. Even microsoft itself is suggest StandBy, which as you already know, is instant.

Waking from Standby because of services does not happen to me because i would have seen it as the computer would be open, but i don't. It remains as i leave it on the night.

Anyway, i knew that some power would be lost but i didn't know what amount of it would be...

 

yes, about the same .... 1% for an hour ... on my x60 tablet 8cell.

 

Of course, Microsoft is the same brilliant company that brought us 19 different versions of Vista and recommends 1Gb RAM for it. Go figure.

For me it's either:
a)Leave it on
b)Shutdown

 

Superfetch...... while a noble idea, it is utterly useless for the power user. When I'm running photoshop and other memory intensive applications superfetch churns and churns and churns trying to keep the memory loaded as I fill and unfill it. I've seen hard drive temps spike considerably if it's left enabled. I turned it off and never looked back. While it might be a reasonable fix for their slowness for the average typing an email user I think superfletch is just another flawed idea in a long line of them from Microsoft for the power user.

 

No, i don't think so. In fact, one of the reasons that i installed Vista again (i had an 1 month Ubuntu experience) and not XP is Superfetch.
It maybe a trick, but a trick that performs well and allow me to have a REALLY responsive system.
I have a pc with the same specs at work (XP) and it really feels sluggish and slow and its repsonsiveness sucks.

If you haven't done already, install Vista SP1. It has enable Superfetch to deal with better algorithms and make the whole system even better. (and responsive)

 

I've measured my T61 to consume about 1 watt of power when suspended. Of course, my meter's resolution is only 1 watt, and 1% of my 9-cell battery is about .84 watts. There's a "feature" in Vista you can set so the laptop goes into hibernate after x number of minutes - what's new is that it will actually wake the laptop up from sleep to um, go into hibernate. Might help in draining less power if you let it sleep for say, longer than 12 hours.

 

I've tried it with SP1. I didn't claim it doesn't help speed up the slow performance of windows. That it does. The payoff does not justify the gains however. You don't fix a slow responding operating system by making it blast data continuously across your hard drive attempting to keep memory loaded. The real fix is to make the OS less laggy, minimize load times what you can through efficiency. If I'm editing RAW images off my SLR for example, every picture I open in photoshop will consume a majority of my memory while running actions on it. Have you ever processed 100 pictures or more with superfetch trying to reload your memory after each one is unloaded from RAM? It's completly the wrong approach to memory management. Try working with large files. Video for example. Nothing beats Vista continuosly trying to buffer your massive videa data files through superfetch. So yes, I agree, superfetch is one way to fix the lag you encounter. It's simply not worth it when you are running memory intensive applications. A lag free experience should be attainable without this type of approach. I'm not a huge Mac fan but I have to admit they do a better job of it (not perfect, but better). Same with Linux. So I agree with you and disagree with you. Personally, I leave it disabled. I'm sure for most people who do general office type work on Vista it works as intended however.

 

@infinus:
Wait...I didn't say that is the correct way to fix this OS, how would i ?? I already said that is a "trick" to make it more responsive. Surely, some things would have been implemented differently from Microsoft but they didn't.

As for the "Vista continuosly trying to buffer your massive videa data files through superfetch": Are you sure that it is Superfetch that cause this ??
Superfetch is supposed to do it's magic when the system come up from cold boot/hibernation and some times when it is idle. It does not get in your way when you are working.
I have not worked with image files though, i do mostly development work here with Visual Studio, Sql Server and some Python work. I have never seen Superfetch get in my way.

 

You did say it was a trick, didn't mean to seem like I was saying you were incorrect in any way. Where superfetch gets in the way isn't while the machine is actually working. It's right after large file/memory operations complete. If I've just completed a working on a large RAW image or a video file and close photoshop or something (just an example) superfetch wants to "get the computer ready" for the next operation, and the hard drive will work to buffer the files I was just working with. I have 2 gigs of ram in my laptop and photoshop can easily use most of that. So if it was using it, and I shut it down, then superfetch wants to refill that 2 gigs of memory with a fresh set of cached files. Then I open another image, the memory gets filled again, and we repeat over and over. So my beef with superfetch isn't that it slows the machine down, or gets in the way. It's needlessly caching files though when I'm just going to use up that ram again. It over works the hard drive and in that type of work I'm not going to see any speed boost from the files it's caching. I can finish working on a batch of photos and look at my temp readouts and my hard drive will be cooking (well, I say that figuratively as the Thinkpad handles temps very well compared to previous machines I've had). My old HP would see 160-165 degree HD temps. In the Thinkpad 115 is roasting Usually it sits around 95-100.

Anyways, my point is that for gaming/photo editing/video editing yadda yadda superfetch doesn't give too much benefit and works the hard drive overly hard. Any situation where the memory is quickly being consumed and released by the applications makes superfetch go crazy. Maybe if they optimized the algorithm a little bit more so that it doesn't try to refill released memory the second it's released and rather waited for the machine to go idle or something. For as much as they've touted Vista's ability to do low level hard drive operations I don't find that superfetch's low level operations step out of the way as well as they should. I would almost rather see it throttled or something.

 

Try SP1. It's said that Superfetch is better in that.

 

When I had a 6 cell in my T60, it lost about 1% an hour.

 

Going OT here, but how sure are you it's Superfetch that's causing your disk activity? I once had a runaway program leak memory in Vista, and before I knew it, it had consumed over 1 gig of physical RAM. This was in a machine with only 1.5 gigs of RAM. Once I shutdown the offending program, Task Manager reported that only about 400 megs of physical RAM was in use. I was actually interested in seeing how fast Vista would reclaim the RAM - I let it sit for a while, and it took a good hour or so before RAM usage rose to 700 megs.

If you hate Superfetch, just disable it in the Services console.

 

@zephyrus17 - I'm on SP1
@kltye - I'm positive, it goes away when disabled, which I do when I'm working with photoshop or gaming.

I'm not going to give to much response, I think we hijacked the original posters thread. Back to the power discussion.

 

This has been discussed in this previous thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=244671

You may want to take a look.

From my own experience with my current system, it is more 0.5% per hour than 1%... That is still quite some battery drain IMO. I wouldn't use sleep each night personally.