Here's about the lowest I can get the device to operate at.



This is a graph of battery discharge rate with one bar of backlight. All radios off, GPS off, Vista SP1, 1GB, optimisations, Fan off (silent mode), Power-save mode.

After a while you see it dropping down to about 700. Note that the values seem to be screwed up. 700 what? It equates to about 6.5W drain by my calculations (looking at remaining battery life)

How are everyone elses graphs?

How:to.
Run 'perfmon' and add the counter for battery drain. At first it usually doesn't appear in the list. Try for a second time and it will probably be there. Adjust the graph size to about 1500.

Steve.

When you say "power save mode" what are you referring to?

I have all radios turned off in BIOS, the screen turned all the way down, and silent mode on.

Discharge is between 940 and 990. Can't get it to drop further.

Under the battery icon you will find 'balanced' , 'power save', and 'performance' modes.

Steve

Do you see any difference in power drain from having 1GB memory vs 2GB memory?

Not noticeable differences, no!

I've put the SC3 to one side for the moment. Under XP its too crippled. [update: I meant 'under Vista']
At IDF it was unreliable and wasted a lot of my time. Networking, Bluetooth, resume from hibernation. I just couldnt rely on it so I used the Akoya mini (Wind) instead.

Steve

Hey Steve I see the IDF went well. Thats to bad that the SC3 didn't work out. I have now been using my SC3 with Vista Ultimate 2GB for about a week and no problems. I was thinking of taking out the Wi-Fi card from my U810 and putting that into the SC3 which I think is more battery saver vs the VIA USB that the SC3 comes with. Also if the right drivers for the video come out, that might improve the battery a little.

I find at home, where I have patience and power, the SC3 works well.

In ultra mobile situations though where time is important and you're using the device as a critical part of a work process, its not reliable enough It was an embarrasement to Atom-based UMCPs at IDF.

Bluetooth tethering was hit-and miss (Vista problem I suspect)

Returning from hibernation was too slow (Vista problem)

Connecting to a busy public wifi wasn't reliable

Vista hard-drive thrashing kicsk in when you don't want it too (Vista problem)

battery life is sub sub sub standard and a constant worry

Wifi uses far too much battery power

keyboard just too small for prolonged table-top use.

video performance is a joke.

To be fair , the SC3 is not meant to be a conferencing/reporting device. Its more of an emergency/backup PC to be used in situations where a main laptop PC is not available or not possible.

SC3 is one of those great form factors that could work so much better if the OS was reliable though. In my opinion, Vista killed the SC3 just like it did the Shift. There's hope with an XP conversion but i'm not going to waste my time until all the drivers are officially available (unlikely!)

Steve.

I also agree that coming out of hibernation takes to long. I use hibernation all the time because at work I'm on the road all the time, so I always use hibernation. On my U810 it comes back faster then the SC3. I have setup my BT DUN with the SC3, so on the road I connect this way to my BB Curve, and so far no problems for me yet. I also paired my small BT Mouse for when I need it. I really like the size of the SC3 because it has the 7" LCD and its almost as small as my U810 but with bigger LCD. I was hoping better battery life because I'm always on the road. I think I will get the extra battery for it, because the battery that it has is just a 2 cell I believe. Actually the battery is very small compare to my U810 battery. On the hard disk thrashing I haven't had that problem yet, but I have disabled the disk defrag, Defender, and indexing. I also don't think that they will release any XP drivers for it, since this is all new chipset that is meant to be used with Vista, and Microsoft wants everyone to use Vista. This should have been ready with all correct drivers which might make a difference only hoping its released soon.

Steve where did you go to check on the SC3 on how much battery draw using the Wi-Fi. I want to compare to my U810 Wi-Fi before I change them. Thanks

The app is called 'perfmon' and you can find it through the searchbar in VIsta (or 'run' in XP)

Add the battery counter 'discharge rate' (on first attempt it won't be in the list so try again and it will appear.)

Simply test it with Wifi on and off and in-use and you'll see the difference in drain.
Sub 1W is good.

Steve.

Some XP stats (SP3 tablet 2005, no rf, silent mode, no gps, lan off):

With org bios and drivers it looks like this:



Korean bios (Ver. X.0b-0016-D519) and drivers:



Does look slightly better after the bios reflash. Seems like the machine is a bit cooler than before as well.

The drivers can be downloaded here:
http://support.kohjinsha.co.kr/driver/sdriver_l.php

Klas

Something in Windows 7 is working well...

Screen at minimum brightness, radios off, power saving mode...

Minimum drain: 704 (about 7W)

With screen off:

Minimum drain: 487 (about 5W)

By turning off a stack of processes and services, I even got the disk to spin down. Minimum drain goes under 600 with screen still on. This took a lot of work though and the disk spun up a few seconds later.

With wifi on, blutooth on, screen at the second level and power-saving mode, the minimum drain was 794

With wifi on, bluetooth on, screen at second level, power saving mode and browsing, average drain was 950.

In summary, it looks like about 10-15% battery life over Vista.

Steve

That's great news Chippy. How's the performance on the SC3 with Windows 7? I have stopped using my SC3 every since I got my M912 last month. I really like the SC3 for its size and yet its very usable. If the SC3 could give us at least 3 hrs that would be good. I could get by with that, which is what I get on my M912 with Wi-Fi and BT on. I actually can get close to that on the SC3 if I have everything turned off.