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[Legendary Silke]

Hmm, I wonder what's draining my tablet battery down so quickly, even if I'm not using it.. it went down to 83% at 10am this morning after being unplugged since 6am but it's had no use on it whatsoever.

Would slipping it into airplane mode only until I need to use it help?

There should be a menu option in the Settings app of most Android devices that shows battery usage statistics. Start your investigation there.

Airplane mode helps, as does closing apps before idling, though the latter shouldn't do too much if the apps are well-behaved. (Also, if you are running some sort of task killer/optimizer/anti-malware solution and aren't sideloading from untrustworthy sources, feel free to uninstall them all. You shouldn't need any of them on a modern Android tablet.)

 

[Tsutarja]

Here's what I found about my tablet's battery usage, and fully charged. Apparently it is normal for the battery to drain down like that, with only a 16-hour battery life.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Here's what I found about my tablet's battery usage, and fully charged. Apparently it is normal for the battery to drain down like that, with only a 16-hour battery life.

The OS itself seems to be draining an unusual amount of battery charge. Have you restarted the tablet? Some battery life issues can be easily solved with a simple reboot.

 

[Tsutarja]

Unless the OS is being vague about what it handles, a restart didn't change the values. I'll attach more screenshots below.

Also, my tablet had an uptime of 647 hours, which is roughly 27 days. I've reset that though :P

 

[Legendary Silke]

Unless the OS is being vague about what it handles, a restart didn't change the values. I'll attach more screenshots below.

Also, my tablet had an uptime of 647 hours, which is roughly 27 days. I've reset that though :P

I do not expect any values to change when the tablet is reset ;)

I do expect anything that was hogging up resources to be cleared away when the system is shut down, though.

 

[Tsutarja]

Weird, then. Because there is no official "reboot" on my tablet, it's either start up or shut down. How long should I keep the tablet off then for it to clear away the resources?

 

[Legendary Silke]

Weird, then. Because there is no official "reboot" on my tablet, it's either start up or shut down. How long should I keep the tablet off then for it to clear away the resources?

A cold boot is as good as any, but just to be safe, 10 seconds after the screen turns off after a shut down attempt.

 

[donavannj]

I'd personally recommend closer to a minute, but that's based on what I have to do with desktops, not tablets.

 

[Legendary Silke]

I'm thinking what kind of laptop I should get this August, seeing as it's my birthday. I'm also wondering whether I should get rod of the Surface if I get a touchscreen ultraportable laptop. Hmm...

I suspect that by then the next generation of Intel processors would be out. The new Intel processors and a 8xx series mobile GeForce GPU would make things real peachy.

 

[countryemo]

Well I done did messed up.. I'm starting to theme windows, made a windows 8 like desktop, then download a windows 8 theme, all was good. Decided to do a mac theme next, it was a installer, had a feeling it was bad idea. Well I stopped it, unistalled it, and now my taskbar is gone, windows button dosent work, and desktop icons are gone, widgets and wallpaper are still there, but its not even right-clickable. URGENT. I could restart it, and see if that works. but it was in middle of a scan, sigh.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Well I done did messed up.. I'm starting to theme windows, made a windows 8 like desktop, then download a windows 8 theme, all was good. Decided to do a mac theme next, it was a installer, had a feeling it was bad idea. Well I stopped it, unistalled it, and now my taskbar is gone, windows button dosent work, and desktop icons are gone, widgets and wallpaper are still there, but its not even right-clickable. URGENT. I could restart it, and see if that works. but it was in middle of a scan, sigh.

CONTROL-SHIFT-ESC to open Task Manager. (You may need to show more details.)

Run Explorer from there. It should bring the desktop back. (I suspect the installer killed the Explorer process without restarting it.) (Let's hope nothing changed with regard to running applications from Task Manager in Windows 8.)

 

[countryemo]

CONTROL-SHIFT-ESC to open Task Manager. (You may need to show more details.)

Run Explorer from there. It should bring the desktop back. (I suspect the installer killed the Explorer process without restarting it.) (Let's hope nothing changed with regard to running applications from Task Manager in Windows 8.)

Its still Win7, but themed. Anyways I chose to restart anyways, everything seems back to normal, but I'm worried it might still cause me trouble it the future.

 

[Kakarot1212]

Its still Win7, but themed. Anyways I chose to restart anyways, everything seems back to normal, but I'm worried it might still cause me trouble it the future.

If you will still encounter this on the future, all you have to do is open the task manager(ctrl+shift+esc). Then click "new task..." and type in "explorer.exe" :)

 

[Tsutarja]

Its still Win7, but themed. Anyways I chose to restart anyways, everything seems back to normal, but I'm worried it might still cause me trouble it the future.

If you worry that it's going to cause trouble in the future, then I really suggest you revert any changes now to prevent further corruption inside your system, now that you've had that experience.

 

[Kakarot1212]

If you worry that it's going to cause trouble in the future, then I really suggest you revert any changes now to prevent further corruption inside your system, now that you've had that experience.

Or you could simply uninstall them.

 

[Tsutarja]

Or you could simply uninstall them.

That's exactly what I said, just worded more complex.

 

[countryemo]

Yeah I unistalled everything, I think, I'll go through again later and a power clean (maybe, that messed me up a bit last time).

Spoiler:

My purty desktop, haha.

And twiggy, isn't Surface pretty much a laptop anyways? (if you got the pro version).

 

[Tsutarja]

The Surface Pro does run Windows 8 instead of Windows RT, but I guess it's just his preference :P In other words, the Surface Pro is pretty much a tablet that runs Windows 8 that can be converted into a laptop with the extra keyboard accessory.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Just remember to not run Explorer from an elevated Task Manager, or everything launched by the newly-instated Explorer will run elevated. ;)

The RT Surface variants are more tablets than laptops, even when you account for the keyboard covers. Still, one can get quite a lot done in the desktop with just Microsoft Office, OneNote (I'm now counting it as a separate app), and Internet Explorer, as well as various Windows apps that come with any Windows installation. Things should be quite better in Windows 8.1 Update 1, too, seeing as Modern UI... er, Windows Store apps will gain some usability enhancements while using a PC like a desktop or laptop.

 

[Terabyte]

I will say, I noticed that Microsoft ditched the UAC requirement to run Windows apps from the start menu. Back when Windows 8.1 first went into a release preview I downloaded it, installed it to a spare computer, and disabled UAC only to find that the apps (such as the weather app) wouldn't work without UAC enabled. But now that I have an actual Windows 8.1 laptop, I disabled UAC and the weather app still works.