Hacker News Reader

Your battery is likely worn from keeping it charged at 100% constantly, lenovo have an option to limit max charge to something like 80% which will greatly reduce battery wear, you just have to turn it off if you are actually planning to run it without AC for as long as possible.

This is really a poor software solution to an old hardware solution that disappeared for the sake of thinness: removable batteries. In the past with easily removable battery packs you could simply pop them out once they're fully charged and pop them in when you wanted to make sure they were charged up. When manufacturers started touting long life cycle batteries to justify internalizing them and making them difficult to replace and impossible to quickly pop out, software manufacturers added this in to attempt or extend battery life.

Before, I simply removed my battery when plugged in all day and significantly extended my battery life. If I needed it, it was mostly charged. It would of course dissipate over time so if I had any plans of using my laptop in an actual mobile fashion or wanted to move my laptop from one long term power source to the next, I'd pop it in, make the move and pop it back out. I of course lost the UPS feature having a laptop with a battery pack also served but I could assess when I thought my power source was/wasn't stable and pop the battery in under those conditions (not very often).

Most people I know use laptops as portable workstations. If you frequently operate in situations where you desire battery alone then the OS charge management works quite well. I don't and most people I know don't. In today's world, mos the use cases I operate under those conditions are better served by my smartphone.

They should just install a physical off switch for the battery, along with physical switches for the camera and networking.

What's wrong with the current solution of having a software switch, aside from lack of use/knowledge about it? What's the advantage to making it physical?

Software switches can be controlled remotely without your knowledge. A physical switch requires physical access to the device.

I am just talking about the battery. I don't see any privacy issue there.

Sometimes you really need to make sure there is no power flowing through your device, which you can't be sure of using software when you are trying to fix software problems. Of course I should have said recording devices and networking, rather than just cameras.

Also, true power off guarantees nobody is remotely activating eavesdropping on your device.

Lenovo have a battery disconnect bios option specifically for doing service work.

Maybe the concern there is devices appearing to be turned off but really still running in low power mode? The only way to be sure is to physically interrupt the power supply.

The people writing the software have a vested interest in your battery wearing out so you have to buy a new laptop

Or externalize the camera and networking modules, so that one can pop them in and out like a battery. Yes.

This is why I still use my Thinkpad W520. If I don't need the battery I just take it out until I need it. I hate that we got rid of removable batteries in basically all devices.

My HP G8 zBook Power have this feature as well, but its only accessible through bios. Luckily their BiosConfigUtility64.exe allows changing bios variables from windows, and the change takes effect immediately. My two .bats for 80 and 100% charging limits.

C:\Programs\SP107705\BIOSConfigUtility64.exe /setvalue:"Battery Health Manager","Maximize my battery health"

C:\Programs\SP107705\BIOSConfigUtility64.exe /setvalue:"Battery Health Manager","Let HP manage my battery charging"

Most batteries on laptops are worn out by heat. They really do not like heat, but will take lots of it, when placed and used in unfavorable conditions, which most laptops probably are.

My laptop only heats up in sleep mode, unfortunately.

Heat mostly matters when charging or discharging rapidly, if wear is concerned. So might be less significant than you'd think.

Well, I have a gaming laptop I bought quite new, but second hand, that was almost never used without cabel (I saw the formerly setup) - and the batterie was allmost dead and blown up in size after some months of use. But since it is a gaming laptop - it generated massive amounts of heat under load. I bought a new battery and took care of the heat: and it is still quite good, after roughly the same time and amount of use and I do charge till 100%.

Throttling of CPU and GPU should surely account for 90% of what you describe, coupled with an old, uncycled battery that can't move ions no more.

My two-year-old Dell Inspiron also has a BIOS option for a "Mostly on AC power" charging profile. I'll still give the power cord a yank every now and then and let it run on battery for a while.

dell has had this feature since i was in college twenty years ago.. it's such a great one

I set it via tlp[0]:

    sudo tlp setcharge $start_precent $stop_percent BAT0

[0]: https://linrunner.de/tlp/

His battery is likely worn by recharging cycles. As the computer is being discharged more often.

Nope, its from charging to 100% constantly which accelerates wear massively.

I've had my Lenovo carbon x1 for a few years set to 80% max charge and its battery life is still good.

Battery stats report 480 charging cycles, capacity has dropped only 8 percent from rated.

It’s not charging to 100% that wears batteries out. It’s storage at 100% that does that.

If you charge to 50% and keep it there, it basically last years.

If you use your notebook primarily on AC, battery is charged and kept on “storage” until you unplug from AC. Over the years, this is equivalent to a battery stored on a box.

So, time stored on a box with 50% is better than 80%, which is also better than 100%.

But. If your notebook is used primarily unplugged from AC, that 100% is better than 80%, because you’ll have fewer deeper discharges.

Deep discharges is what form dentrites. Dentrities is what kill lithium batteries.

> If you use your notebook primarily on AC, battery is charged and kept on “storage” until you unplug from AC. Over the years, this is equivalent to a battery stored on a box.

I'm not sure what you mean, by default most laptops will charge to 100% and keep trickle charging it to that level consistently while on AC.

Setting a charge max of 40% would be ideal, but there is point where you want to maintain some level of runtime when removed from AC, so 80% is a reasonable compromise.

It is terrible to limit max battery charge, so max battery charge doesn't decline!!!

Its akin to not driving your car in the redline constantly - sure you can do it, but its going to reduce engine life.

Its the same with batteries, you keep them at 100% constantly they will wear out. Its just a limitation of the technology.

Some devices now try and use "machine learning" to determine max charge, for example iphones will maintain a medium charge throughout the night then do a final top up charge to reach 100% just before you wake up.

> Its akin to not driving your car in the redline constantly - sure you can do it, but its going to reduce engine life.

Yes, of course. That's not the issue, though.

> Some devices now try and use "machine learning" to determine max charge, for example iphones will maintain a medium charge throughout the night then do a final top up charge to reach 100% just before you wake up.

That's different and even opposite from advertising X max charge and only delivering 80% of X as the max charge. What I referred to is a bait and switch, where the manufacturer advertises one thing but provides another. Your example justification, however, is not a bait and switch but aligns the technical MVPs and marketing promises.

The situation is similar to purchasing a fridge that only operates at 80%. All food spoils more quickly, but the fridge lasts longer. If that had been disclosed, instead of the opposite implication from the marketing, then consumers would have almsot certainly made different purchasing decisions. That is why these sorts of things are generally illegal.

In your car example, if a car is advertised with 400 HP but never goes above 320 HP, that's called false advertising. Sure, the engine can get to 400 HP tested on a bench, but that's not why the car was purchased.

Right, so what vendors are doing now is calling batteries consumables that last one, maybe two years with the default 100% charging limit to get max run time on battery.

Consumers can either accept this and pay for a new battery every few years, or if they want they can limit to 80% and get way longer life battery life if they can live with the reduced runtime.

I'm not aware of any vendors claiming x capacity battery with mandatory limiting charging to 80% of x, rather its an option you have the choice to explicitly enable.

Isn't Microsoft embarrassed about this?

Yeah, I was astounded when I recently found out about the "modern standby" idiocy. I've almost always used Mac laptops, but I just assumed that at some point in the last 20 years the PC world would figure out reliable sleep. And it seems like they mostly did, and then Microsoft broke it for no good reason?

I actually just want them to fix connected standby and properly be able to do these things with low power.

My phone (a oneplus 6) can be on standby for nearly a week. That windows laptops attempt at this mode drains the battery by the end of a workday is just pathetic. Instant resume should be available with no practical compromises.

That is seriously bad.

Just as a data point, my 2019 mac sleeps perfectly for multiple days, no problem.

My 2019 Razer Blade does the same.

As a Mac user with the same gripe of the ctrl key placement: Remapping it to the caps lock works wonders :)

I use so many keyboards, not all of which are under my control.. I wish I could, but it would bring chaos to my typing world.

Something like that exists for DVORAK. Maybe someone else makes a similar product that works like an any keyboard.

https://www.keyghost.com/qido/

You can set this in the OS itself.

Wouldn't you need root/admin access for that ?

> As I was typing this, a great example of said broken crap, is Lenovo popping up a MessageBox asking me to reboot to update my firmware. Didn't software developers all agree well over a decade ago that windows stealing focus was not a good thing? So why then is a top of the line brand in the PC world writing shit like this?

Don't think that MacOS spares you about that either. Update notifications are equally distracting.

> Don't think that MacOS spares you about that either. Update notifications are equally distracting.

You're right but if I recall correctly notifications do not steal the focus.

> why then is a top of the line brand in the PC world writing shit like this

"It's OK when we do it"

My bet is that Microsoft and Windows laptop manufacturers aren’t embarrassed by this because approximately no one uses their laptop as a portable device. The laptops just sit on the desk charging 99.9% of the time. People use their smartphones the rest of the time.

Really? Maybe in 2020 or 2021, but not in 2019. My work laptop got dragged to meetings and gets taken on flights to remote offices. My personal laptop gets used in every room of the house.

Most companies issue laptops instead of desktops.

While commuting back and forth to work those are definitely asleep in a bag/briefcase.

Microsoft released windows 11, so, no, they have no shame. Microsoft is a company without leadership, without direction, and without a central vision. The only feature of windows that people like, is that it continues to run the software they need. Other than that the OS itself gets in the way, stops your workflow, and makes your life harder. And the only other commercial alternative is just as bad in other ways. The natural result of letting the computer marker be controlled by a few big players.

JetBrains Rider. If you care about quality, don't bother with Visual Studio at all.

Or CLion, if you’re doing C++ or Rust development

Battery drain a problem? Join the Framework laptop movement. Mac bothers you slightly less than Windows does (and costs more for the same hardware)? Make the jump to Ubuntu and dip your leg into desktop Linux. If you're inseparable from Visual Studio, I'd think Wine could handle it.

> really hate the placement of the Ctrl key

Macs used to be really customiseable, and they haven't got around to ripping all of that out yet.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys

You can control how the various keys behave.

> and if Visual Studio ran on Mac I'd probably switch my PC out also

Not sure if it supports all the features you need, but it exists.

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

That’s just a rebranded Xamarin IDE - but for .NET development on Mac, I’ve found JetBrains Rider does most of what the full Visual Studio package does

I like Rider better even on Windows. My favorite thing about Visual Studio on Windows was always the debugger, and I think Clion and Rider have lapped them there in the past two years.

Yes it's just Xamarin modified to look like a native Visual Studio for Mac.

Much better off using Rider (also works nicely on Linux).

IntelliJ is still a little broken on wayland I think. Last I checked they were waiting on a patch to Swing, so right now it's only running under XWayland, it's fairly buggy and doesn't scale nicely. You also need to set some env variables or you'll get a blank screen. It still works pretty well though, which is better than any other similar IDE.

Seconding Rider if you're on macOS. It shares its analysis code with ReSharper, so it's extremely featureful. In fact, it's usually faster than VS + ReSharper because it isn't running two code analysis engines at once and it doesn't have to run the analysis out-of-process.

Note that if OP expects anything like the "real" Visual Studio that runs on Windows, this is really nothing compared to it. I'd even go further and actually prefer Vscode with the right extensions compared to this "Visual Studio".

sounds like when we try to run iTunes on Windows - each competitor is intentionally crapping on the other's users

Don't worry, the Music app on macOS is just as bad as iTunes on Windows...

It's more that Visual Studio is a massive project that was built around running on Windows. It would be a huge undertaking to bring it over to another OS and probably not add nearly enough value. The only reason macOS has "Visual Studio" at all is because Microsoft bought out Xamarin and rebranded their Xamarin Studio product.

Yup it would just not be worth it to bring real VS to macOS. Then why decrease its brand value by marketing a crappy product like Xamarin (which I think has always been bad, and I honestly don't know why MS bothered to buy it) as if it was VS? Just call it Xamarin, or VS "lite", or anything, but not VS as it is not VS.

Consistent branding. Visual Studio is the name they're using for all their code editing software. I don't think it's a good idea given the confusion it causes when people talk about the various programs, but they are distinctly named Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Visual Studio for Mac.

Microsoft has never been good at naming things. They made that mess of Windows naming at multiple points and they are still making a mess with the Xbox brand.

iTunes is crappy in Macs, too!!

> Isn’t Microsoft embarrassed about this?

Do Microsoft Surface devices have this problem (the heat/fans spinning/high battery drain while sleeping, I mean)? If not, then Microsoft has no need to be embarrassed; it’s the rest of the PC laptop industry that should be embarrassed for not shipping hardware that does the right thing when the OS asks it to.

(Though, I mean, the rest of the PC industry should already be embarrassed, for still shipping new PCs in 2021 that don’t have Thunderbolt/USB4 ports, and desktop PCs that don’t even have a single USB-C port.)

There’s also the fact that Microsoft is (perhaps by accident of fate) “building for the future”; a lot of Windows 11’s assumptions in particular make sense given hardware and CPU steppings in mind that should have shipped a year ago, but which are caught in the COVID logistical conga-line and so won’t be seen for another year. That includes e.g. Intel CPUs with ARM-like big/LITTLE designs.

Yes, Surface devices have this problem. It was a frequent occurrence for me to put my Surface Book into my bag and later take it out completely dead or hot and drained.

Wouldn't put all the blame on hardware. It's a back and forth sometimes to get the OS and hardware working together.

It's not a 50/50 responsibility split, but it's definitely not 100% on hardware.

VS for Mac: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-20...

Isn't this the MonoDevelop/Xamarin Studio version of VS?

> Visual Studio ran on Mac

Visual Studio Code does. Is that the same?

Even has native M1 support.

It's not the same at all. Visual Studio is an IDE (like Eclipse) and Visual Studio Code is an extensible text editor (like Emacs).

It is pretty good though. It's enjoying a big surge in popularity lately and seems to deserve it.

Visual studio running on Mac? I’ve been using visual studio code on it for years no problem. I’m now realizing there’s a difference between the two. Care to explain a little more why you use VS and not VSC?

Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are completely different things. VSC can do a subset of what VS can do, but some people really need the full power of a traditional IDE. VS vs VSC is like the difference between a smartphone camera and a full camera platform. You can rig up an iPhone (VSC) to do everything a D6 (VS) can do, but it won't be as usable.

But Visual Studio 2019 is available for mac.

It shares some code nowadays (started with a MonoDevelop codebase). However, Visual Studio (not Code) for Mac is mostly targeted at at C# or mobile development.

If you want to make Windows apps, it just doesn't support that scenario.

And they just announced they’re rewriting it to native for Mac in 2022…

> if Visual Studio ran on Mac

It is! What do you mean? :)

The Mac version of Visual Studio is closer to a fork of MonoDevelop than mainline VS. Rider is a better experience than either though, IMO.

The implementation of the none S3 sleep on most windows laptops these days is not microsofts fault. Critical updates (firmware) always have priority and even on mac's you get negging pop-ups for updates all the time. That said you can fix everything what you said with one checkbox. It's not the pc which sucks it's you the user.

For all the people downvoting. He is the equivalent of people making "screenshots" with their mobile phone instead of using printscrn. I bet you are complaining about your own users all the time and here you defend someone who can't even be bothered to look at the options he has. smh

The complaint was not that the firmware notification existed or was urgent, but that it stole input focus.