Interesting view. Based on direct experience with this device? I’ve found that permanently using mains shortens battery life (admittedly on older devices that may not be so ‘intelligent’ in power use) - or at least reduces the amount of time the battery will power the device when it IS used. Whereas using battery down to about 10% and charging to 90% and rarely leaving it plugged in seems to help battery last a long time. Am I imagining it?
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Can it play Fallout 4?
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As one decased person of questionable morals once said. “Sometimes you just have to do business wihth these assholes.”
Maybe Boing Boing should extened an offer to Rick Steves. If there’s anyone that needs a light travel computer, it’s him. Or Mikey Chen.
Performance is shown in the /batteryreport. I have an SP3 and an SP4 in where I have followed this policy, and after years of using these devices only with power adapters, my batteries remain like new, and I consider them to be like protective in case the power goes out. At the current rate of performance and degradation, I expect each of these Surface computers to last in excess of a decade, and ideally two decades or more. I just map power plugs in all the cafe’s I am likely to go to when mobile and treat the device like it has no battery, and I find it is no inconvenience to plug in where a small effort is made to do so. I have never done a full single recharge cycle on my SP3, and my SP4 has done about one of its available 600 battery cycles in the past two years of heavy use 15 hours a day. It is the cycles which count the lifetime of the battery, and if it is not going through recharge cycles, there is no degradation. It can all depend a lot on the firmware of a device and whether it is actively using the battery when plugged in as well, like the Surface Book does under heavy loads. There are three parts of a Surface which can wear out, foremost being the battery, which is intended to wear out to ensure one continues buying them to support the industry and innovation, so they are needing the computers to wear out eventually now that they are otherwise solid-state. The second component which can wear is the fan, but in my experience the fan is rarely activated but briefly at times, so it should not wear out. And the third component is the type cover keyboard. I just put a new type cover on my SP4, and because I take good care of the tablet portion itself, a new keyboard makes it like an all new system in my experience. If you can afford to buy a new Surface every 3 or 4 years then certainly enjoy the battery as much as one likes, but if you need the system to last at least a decade, just never use battery unless absolutely necessary, and I assure you that with time you will be glad you implemented this wise policy for how to extend the functional lifetime of a mobile device with non-user replaceable battery.
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Interesting. I guess all our mileages may vary. I was talking about batteries in general, of course - never had a Surface. I used a Thinkpad for 5 years mostly on mains and the battery would power it for significantly less time than it used to after at the end of that period. I have a Macbook I only ever use on battery and after 5 years its battery still has 92% of original capacity. I know they are not at all directly comparable (and I believe they use the same battery technology), but still…
Thanks for the input.
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