- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
You must log in or register to comment.
The gist:
The always-on nature of phones and tablets is incredibly convenient. Wouldn’t it be great if your (non-ARM) laptop or desktop could do this too? Save power when you’re not using it, but still be ready at a moment’s notice?
Microsoft certainly thought so, which is why when Windows 8 was released, it introduced a new feature called Connected Standby. If the hardware indicated support (foreshadowing), instead of telling the BIOS to enter system standby, Windows would enter Connected Standby.
I first ran into the wonders of Modern Standby on my Dell Inspiron 5482, an 8th generation Intel 2-in-1 laptop with a spinning hard drive. After a few months of owning it, I started noticing that it wasn’t sleeping properly. If I closed it, I could still sometimes hear the fans running even 15 minutes later. If I put it in my backpack, there was a good chance I’d take it out at 0% battery or to the fans running at full blast and the CPU dangerously close to overheating. Half the time the hard drive wouldn’t even spin down, which sure is nice when you’re planning to be jostling it around in a bag for a couple hours.
The worst part of this all was that Dell gave you no official way to disable Modern Standby. Windows itself isn’t any help, either. If the BIOS says it supports Modern Standby, Windows takes it at its word and completely disables the ability to enter S3 sleep (classic standby). There’s no official or documented option for disabling Modern Standby through Windows, which is incredibly annoying.
Another issue with Modern Standby is what can trigger wakeup events, and for how long. Supposedly, only certain built-in Windows functions, like updates and telemetry can actually wake the device up, but so can apps installed through the Microsoft Store.
Microsoft probably deserves most of the blame for this mess. It created the feature and has been (allegedly) pressuring vendors to implement it and discontinue support for S3 sleep.
Half the time the hard drive wouldn’t even spin down, which sure is nice when you’re planning to be jostling it around in a bag for a couple hours.
I’m pretty sure this is what trashed my first laptop. Thankfully I didn’t have a lot of information on there yet and was able to replace the hard drive. But absolutely ridiculous that this passed quality control.
I actually like suspend to RAM. Makes my laptop usable after sleep a bit faster. But absolutely not on Windows because then my fans are still spinning after minutes like many have reported. But I was simply able to disable that with a registry tweak and it’s now going to regular ACPI S3 when I close the lid. Is my Framework Laptop 13 (i5-1240P) an uncommon exception?
Does suspend to ram drain battery?
Yes depending on the sleep state. Also some power is going to ram to keep it alive. I think for framework it’s in the realm of 5% an hour or something like that.
I usually go the hibernation route.
Desktops I sleep to ram, laptops I hibernate to the SSD.
I have one laptop running Windows and I just changed the BIOS/UEFI setting so that closing the display turns off the computer.
Also handy for Linux distros with poor standby/sleep support.
Pretty drastic, I can imagine losing some work accidentally because of that (closing with improper connection to external monitor). Why not hibernate?
I dunno why I individually responded to people when I should’ve just done this.
It’s because one of your peripherals is set to wake state. You can google how to figure that out.
I turned my mouse and keyboard off from this. The mouse will wake it even if you move it. So f that. Keyboard. Some. Keyboards will wake just by having an active transmission (so manually turn it off every time - no thanks)
Now I manually have to touch my power button to wake.
The “allow device to wake up computer” is already set to “off” in mouse, keyboard and other USB devices, together with any bios settings related to wake up. Yet still, at least once a week my computer is on in the morning, after i set it to Hibernate the night before. Sometimes it even power cycles straight away after i tried to turn it of. Same today, when i was was out of the house for a few hours, and it decided to magically turn itself on, run windows update and restart. I have to power it down and turn of the the power on the power-strip each night. My work laptop has the same issue, except it does not care about the power strip switch and discharges the battery overnight instead!
