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    USB modem ruining battery life

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by snvskvskl, Jun 14, 2011.

  1. snvskvskl

    snvskvskl Notebook Enthusiast

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    It's a Huawei E153 and I have about 2-3hrs less battery life per charge since I started using it. Is this typical? Or how can I fix/mitigate it?

    I was planning on getting a mobile broadband chip to put inside the laptop at some point, will it cause the same issue??

    Thanks.
     
    snvskvskl, Jun 14, 2011
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  2. Colonel O'Neill

    Colonel O'Neill Notebook Deity

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    Sounds about right? Mobile broadband modems can be quite power hungry.

    Internal chips can draw more than the power available through the USB port, so it might be worse there.
     
    Colonel O'Neill, Jun 14, 2011
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  3. snvskvskl

    snvskvskl Notebook Enthusiast

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    Why does the internal chip draw more power? Apparently this UBS modem I'm using has pretty poor bandwidth - do the internal ones allow me to maximise the bandwidth available for the connection I'm on?
     
    snvskvskl, Jun 14, 2011
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  4. bogatyr

    bogatyr Notebook Evangelist

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    The USB port isn't going to be the bottleneck. Your cell phone service is. The internal modem won't give you any better results unless you have poor signal and the internal antenna is better than the USB one.
     
    bogatyr, Jun 14, 2011
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  5. Mech0z

    Mech0z Notebook Evangelist

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    Signal should improve when the antenna is in all of the monitor compared to a little usb dongel
     
    Mech0z, Jun 14, 2011
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  6. bogatyr

    bogatyr Notebook Evangelist

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    But if you already are maxing out service... more signal isn't going to help any.

    I can max out the 3G speed on Verizon with a bar of service at my house. Moving outside to get all four bars doesn't improve my speed.
     
    bogatyr, Jun 14, 2011
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  7. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    There's potentially 2.5W used by the device itself, the power used by the USB system because it can't go to sleep and the extra CPU activity caused by the web browser once it realises that there is a connection. Using an internal device will let the USB system go to sleep (if nothing else is plugged in to tthe USB ports) and the bigger internal antennae may allow communication using less power. However, there will still be some impact on your battery time.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Jun 14, 2011
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  8. wkearney99

    wkearney99 Notebook Consultant

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    Tangentially, in an older Sony ultraportable I found using a PCMCIA cell modem card was a lot less hit on the battery than it was using motherboard WiFi to connect to an external MiFi hotspot gadget.

    I also noticed little improvement in speed by moving to a part of the house that showed more bars.

    But I returned the MiFi device because it wouldn't connect to 4G anywhere in the house or out on the boat in the Chesapeake. That and it didn't work when trying to use it internationally in an area they claimed it would (using 3G, of course).

    If we travel and need connectivity for more than one device we use a Linksys router that has a PCMCIA socket for it. Works great, when you have an outlet for the router. At some point we'll need to move to a USB cell modem. And we'd likely go with a new router capable of using it (cradlepoint, etc).

    Note, some of the USB modems aren't just a single logical device. Usually a USB-to-serial converter first and then the modem is attached to that. This seems to be a problem for power management software. PCMCIA cards (the limited number I've used) didn't seem to have this added layer. I could see some truth in the notion of a WWAN or ExpressCard device having better power management options.

    I'd be very interested in reading about tests showing power consumption by the various cell modems.
     
    wkearney99, Jun 14, 2011
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