I recently bought an HP Stream 7. One of the major problems I've had with it is battery drain when not in use. In older computers and operating systems, sleep mode was a heavy sleep; apparently sleep mode for today's computers and O/S's means light sleep, whereby the device can still execute some things, including Wi-Fi. This is great for those that want a table to function like a phone, but not for those like me that just want it for a reader and occasional use.
I was losing 50% or more of battery over the course of 8 hours over night… not cool. Research on the web showed that the 2 major causes of the drain were the Wi-Fi and the volume not being muted. So… my manual procedure for putting my device away was to disable the Wi-Fi and set the volume to mute. This worked greatly; yesterday evening I went to bed and unplugged my 100% charged HP Stream 7 after disabling the Wi-Fi and setting the volume to mute.
10 hours later, my battery was still at 100%... Yes, you read that correctly.
I keep testing this, and it still rings true… every time there is no more than 1% loss.
But how tedious is it to disable the Wi-Fi and set to mute when setting the device aside, and re-enabling when I resume use? Windows Task Scheduler and PowerShell to the rescue.
I created a couple of PowerShell scripts that will automate this for both scenarios. I also created a couple of task scheduler definitions that will execute the PowerShell scripts as a reaction to entering and exiting the connected standby mode.
So… now whenever my device goes into connected standby, either by pressing the power button or via timeout, the Wi-Fi will automatically get disabled and the volume set to mute. Conversely, when the unit comes out of connected standby mode, the Wi-Fi will automatically get enabled and the volume unmuted.
Following is a link to the ConnectedStandbyAutomation.zip that contains the PowerShell scripts, as well as the exports of my 2 task scheduler definitions. Just unzip the contents of the zip file to a folder called <c:\program files\ConnectedStandbyAutomation>, and import the task scheduler definitions to task scheduler.
1drv.ms/179rdI1 (paste into your browser's URL/address bar... apparently I don't have enough points to post URL's yet)
Hope this helps someone. I'm sure this could also be used on other tablets as well, such as the Dell Venue, with like results.
I was losing 50% or more of battery over the course of 8 hours over night… not cool. Research on the web showed that the 2 major causes of the drain were the Wi-Fi and the volume not being muted. So… my manual procedure for putting my device away was to disable the Wi-Fi and set the volume to mute. This worked greatly; yesterday evening I went to bed and unplugged my 100% charged HP Stream 7 after disabling the Wi-Fi and setting the volume to mute.
10 hours later, my battery was still at 100%... Yes, you read that correctly.
I keep testing this, and it still rings true… every time there is no more than 1% loss.
But how tedious is it to disable the Wi-Fi and set to mute when setting the device aside, and re-enabling when I resume use? Windows Task Scheduler and PowerShell to the rescue.
I created a couple of PowerShell scripts that will automate this for both scenarios. I also created a couple of task scheduler definitions that will execute the PowerShell scripts as a reaction to entering and exiting the connected standby mode.
So… now whenever my device goes into connected standby, either by pressing the power button or via timeout, the Wi-Fi will automatically get disabled and the volume set to mute. Conversely, when the unit comes out of connected standby mode, the Wi-Fi will automatically get enabled and the volume unmuted.
Following is a link to the ConnectedStandbyAutomation.zip that contains the PowerShell scripts, as well as the exports of my 2 task scheduler definitions. Just unzip the contents of the zip file to a folder called <c:\program files\ConnectedStandbyAutomation>, and import the task scheduler definitions to task scheduler.
1drv.ms/179rdI1 (paste into your browser's URL/address bar... apparently I don't have enough points to post URL's yet)
Hope this helps someone. I'm sure this could also be used on other tablets as well, such as the Dell Venue, with like results.
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