6 ms·

Is windows even usable on laptops still? Between the waking from sleep to check notifications and the intensity of all the new background tasks it likely isn't

Is windows even usable on laptops still? Between the waking from sleep to check notifications and the intensity of all the new background tasks it likely isn't pleasant.

vel0city 1y ago
> Is windows even usable on laptops still? Is Linux even usable on laptops still? I've got a number of machines that still seem to fail to wake from sleep on even most recent and common distros. Is Mac even usable on laptops still? I've had a lot of coworkers and friends with Macs still run into hot bag situations often. > Between the waking from sleep to check notifications Its rarely ever actually Windows that's causing the issue. Almost always crappy drivers and crappy hardware that causes the wake. Disabling allowing wake from sleep on whatever crappy hardware is causing the sleep problems is almost always the answer. I recently spent some time trying to figure out why my Lenovo Legion Go was waking from sleep. I could put it to sleep and it would almost always wake up within an hour. There's a nice utility in Windows to help analyze power patterns on the system called powercfg which will give you a good report with powercfg /sleepstudy . Turns out one of the USB4 controllers was using a stupid amount of power while asleep which would cause the system to wake. Disabling that USB4 controller to wake the system from sleep meant it wasn't even partially awake and thus stopped using so much power and would not cause the system to wake. Now the device has been asleep for many hours and hasn't woken up once unexpectedly. It also is getting less battery loss sitting on the desk asleep than it had previously.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  At some point you have to blame the driver model on Windows. People have been saying "it's the drivers" for 30 years. Also most of this is intentional first party behavior from Microsoft. Windows intentionally periodically wakes from sleep to do communication (for notifications etc.) Microsoft's advice last I checked is to not store sleeping laptops running windows in laptop bags. There's a ton of other decisions they've made that just make the OS incredibly unpleasant on any device with mediocre cooling and a battery. That's why I wrote post: is it bad enough yet that it's intolerable.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    > At some point you have to blame the driver model on Windows. Serious question, specifically what is wrong with the driver model in terms of this situation? What change would you propose to solve this? Why isn't it a matter of the device manufacturers churning out crappy and poorly tested devices and solely Microsoft's fault? I do agree, Microsoft should probably make it easier to point out "hey this device is causing your system to wake, here's some potential fixes", as reading the powercfg /sleepstudy takes a little bit of deeper computer knowledge. But in the end a crappy driver and bad hardware is going to be a crappy driver and bad hardware. Should Windows just refuse to work at all with said crappy hardware? Especially considering I've had so many other devices which don't have these problems. If it was truly the OS that was at fault, why isn't the issue with every device running the OS instead of only some devices with some hardware and firmware versions? > Microsoft's advice last I checked is to not store sleeping laptops running windows in laptop bags Got an official source for that claim?
    - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
      https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2318281/surface-studio-2-overheating-in-bag https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2318281/... > Therefore, we highly recommend that all customers do not put the Surface in their bag while sleeping, as this can indeed cause overheating. > Best Regards, > Mitchell | Microsoft Community Support Specialist
      - vel0city 1y ago
        Posted by: Anonymous Yeah, real official documentation there. Got anything more real in terms of documentation other than a forum post by anonymous?
    - biggoodwolf 1y ago
      S1 S2 S3 S4 sleep modes and what happened to the most useful of them ;)
      - deleted 1y ago
- const_cast 1y ago
  While this is definitely true, we have to acknowledge Windows has some unique challenges in this space. Sleep pretty much never works correctly on Windows laptops. For me, suspend does. In addition, Windows does have background processes doing god knows what. It's not uncommon to have some slowdown, open up Task Manager and seeing some process I-don't-know-what-it-does pinned at 99% CPU usage.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    > Sleep pretty much never works correctly on Windows laptops Sleep has worked pretty much fine on the vast majority of the Windows computers I've owned/managed, outside of a few troublesome devices such as this Legion Go and some network cards that would wake on any activity. Meanwhile about half of my Linux machines over the years routinely fail to wake from sleep. Even today I still get issues on a modern-ish Thinkpad that fails to resume from time to time but which slept perfectly fine in Windows 10 and Windows 11 every time. > It's not uncommon to have some slowdown, open up Task Manager and seeing some process I-don't-know-what-it-does pinned at 99% CPU usage Yes, and I'm sure if an average user used ps aux on Linux they'd know what everything in that list is doing.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      > Sleep has worked pretty much fine on the vast majority of the Windows computers I've owned/managed Good for you, and I believe you. However you're the only person I've ever met with this sentiment. IME even multi-thousand dollar Windows laptops do not sleep right. Luckily, it kind of works out. Windows rots if it's left un-rebooted for a few days so forcing reboots with broken sleep almost optimizes the Windows experience. > Yes, and I'm sure if an average user used ps aux on Linux they'd know what everything in that list is doing. Fair, but they also don't need to. I never, ever have this problem on Linux. We do have background processes but they seem to be written by people who are, I'm assuming, not asleep. They work fine. Even file indexers like baloo work correctly. I can find any file on my computer on the order of milliseconds, and I never have high CPU usage. I'm being a bit cheeky here - it's very easy to hate on Windows search so I shouldn't be bragging about functional search. There was that one Windows handheld recently that released a SteamOS version, but I can't remember the name. Anyway sleep works correctly on the SteamOS version, though that's mostly valve's work with properly suspending games. Oh and it gets an extra hour or so of battery. But the tradeoff is... wait... 10% extra performance in games? Through the translation layer? Wow, that's shocking. Point being, Windows on battery-enabled devices is truly ass. The bottom of the barrel of experiences. It becomes evident when you try out other devices. I have a switch. I press the power button and it turns off. It turns back on instantly. The power doesn't drain. And, my game is right back where I left it. I didn't restore from a save. I'm not on the main menu. It literally suspended the entire state of the game and un-suspended it like nothing happened. That's unthinkable on Windows. I would never, ever put my Windows laptop to sleep with an unsaved Excel sheet open. If it wakes up, there's a good chance that application is mysteriously restarted. I don't trust anything on Windows.

Is windows even usable on laptops still? Between the waking from sleep to check notifications and the intensity of all the new background tasks it likely isn't pleasant.

vel0city 1y ago

> Is windows even usable on laptops still? Is Linux even usable on laptops still? I've got a number of machines that still seem to fail to wake from sleep on even most recent and common distros. Is Mac even usable on laptops still? I've had a lot of coworkers and friends with Macs still run into hot bag situations often. > Between the waking from sleep to check notifications Its rarely ever actually Windows that's causing the issue. Almost always crappy drivers and crappy hardware that causes the wake. Disabling allowing wake from sleep on whatever crappy hardware is causing the sleep problems is almost always the answer. I recently spent some time trying to figure out why my Lenovo Legion Go was waking from sleep. I could put it to sleep and it would almost always wake up within an hour. There's a nice utility in Windows to help analyze power patterns on the system called powercfg which will give you a good report with powercfg /sleepstudy . Turns out one of the USB4 controllers was using a stupid amount of power while asleep which would cause the system to wake. Disabling that USB4 controller to wake the system from sleep meant it wasn't even partially awake and thus stopped using so much power and would not cause the system to wake. Now the device has been asleep for many hours and hasn't woken up once unexpectedly. It also is getting less battery loss sitting on the desk asleep than it had previously.

mathiaspoint 1y ago
At some point you have to blame the driver model on Windows. People have been saying "it's the drivers" for 30 years. Also most of this is intentional first party behavior from Microsoft. Windows intentionally periodically wakes from sleep to do communication (for notifications etc.) Microsoft's advice last I checked is to not store sleeping laptops running windows in laptop bags. There's a ton of other decisions they've made that just make the OS incredibly unpleasant on any device with mediocre cooling and a battery. That's why I wrote post: is it bad enough yet that it's intolerable.
- vel0city 1y ago
  > At some point you have to blame the driver model on Windows. Serious question, specifically what is wrong with the driver model in terms of this situation? What change would you propose to solve this? Why isn't it a matter of the device manufacturers churning out crappy and poorly tested devices and solely Microsoft's fault? I do agree, Microsoft should probably make it easier to point out "hey this device is causing your system to wake, here's some potential fixes", as reading the powercfg /sleepstudy takes a little bit of deeper computer knowledge. But in the end a crappy driver and bad hardware is going to be a crappy driver and bad hardware. Should Windows just refuse to work at all with said crappy hardware? Especially considering I've had so many other devices which don't have these problems. If it was truly the OS that was at fault, why isn't the issue with every device running the OS instead of only some devices with some hardware and firmware versions? > Microsoft's advice last I checked is to not store sleeping laptops running windows in laptop bags Got an official source for that claim?
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2318281/surface-studio-2-overheating-in-bag https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2318281/... > Therefore, we highly recommend that all customers do not put the Surface in their bag while sleeping, as this can indeed cause overheating. > Best Regards, > Mitchell | Microsoft Community Support Specialist
    - vel0city 1y ago
      Posted by: Anonymous Yeah, real official documentation there. Got anything more real in terms of documentation other than a forum post by anonymous?
  - biggoodwolf 1y ago
    S1 S2 S3 S4 sleep modes and what happened to the most useful of them ;)
    - deleted 1y ago
const_cast 1y ago
While this is definitely true, we have to acknowledge Windows has some unique challenges in this space. Sleep pretty much never works correctly on Windows laptops. For me, suspend does. In addition, Windows does have background processes doing god knows what. It's not uncommon to have some slowdown, open up Task Manager and seeing some process I-don't-know-what-it-does pinned at 99% CPU usage.
- vel0city 1y ago
  > Sleep pretty much never works correctly on Windows laptops Sleep has worked pretty much fine on the vast majority of the Windows computers I've owned/managed, outside of a few troublesome devices such as this Legion Go and some network cards that would wake on any activity. Meanwhile about half of my Linux machines over the years routinely fail to wake from sleep. Even today I still get issues on a modern-ish Thinkpad that fails to resume from time to time but which slept perfectly fine in Windows 10 and Windows 11 every time. > It's not uncommon to have some slowdown, open up Task Manager and seeing some process I-don't-know-what-it-does pinned at 99% CPU usage Yes, and I'm sure if an average user used ps aux on Linux they'd know what everything in that list is doing.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    > Sleep has worked pretty much fine on the vast majority of the Windows computers I've owned/managed Good for you, and I believe you. However you're the only person I've ever met with this sentiment. IME even multi-thousand dollar Windows laptops do not sleep right. Luckily, it kind of works out. Windows rots if it's left un-rebooted for a few days so forcing reboots with broken sleep almost optimizes the Windows experience. > Yes, and I'm sure if an average user used ps aux on Linux they'd know what everything in that list is doing. Fair, but they also don't need to. I never, ever have this problem on Linux. We do have background processes but they seem to be written by people who are, I'm assuming, not asleep. They work fine. Even file indexers like baloo work correctly. I can find any file on my computer on the order of milliseconds, and I never have high CPU usage. I'm being a bit cheeky here - it's very easy to hate on Windows search so I shouldn't be bragging about functional search. There was that one Windows handheld recently that released a SteamOS version, but I can't remember the name. Anyway sleep works correctly on the SteamOS version, though that's mostly valve's work with properly suspending games. Oh and it gets an extra hour or so of battery. But the tradeoff is... wait... 10% extra performance in games? Through the translation layer? Wow, that's shocking. Point being, Windows on battery-enabled devices is truly ass. The bottom of the barrel of experiences. It becomes evident when you try out other devices. I have a switch. I press the power button and it turns off. It turns back on instantly. The power doesn't drain. And, my game is right back where I left it. I didn't restore from a save. I'm not on the main menu. It literally suspended the entire state of the game and un-suspended it like nothing happened. That's unthinkable on Windows. I would never, ever put my Windows laptop to sleep with an unsaved Excel sheet open. If it wakes up, there's a good chance that application is mysteriously restarted. I don't trust anything on Windows.