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Chromebook - power usage & battery life?
#1
Apparently it's Back To School season, and there's been a bunch of Chromebook commercials claiming "all day" battery life.
I checked here and the, um, "alt"forum, and see some of you (e.g. GotSmart) own them.

What's been your real world experience, in terms of power usage & battery life?
Any other issues?

I'm thinking that could save me a lot of power.
Writing Code doesn't require much "oomph", just a good text editor and other development tools. Smile

Here's a specific model I'm considering ($199.00):
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-15-6-c...Id=6170703
"Cause how you get there is the worthier part." Shephard Book to Kaylee, Firefly
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2019-Dec update:
I've escaped Winter!
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#2
Maybe “all day” on standby but when I was using a Chromebook at my job, it wouldn’t last for more than 90-120 minutes of activity.
"Life is short, smile while you still have teeth."
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  • Kaylee (08-14-2018)
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#3
The DC adapter for my 2011 Acer Win7 real 250gig HD netbook reads 30watts 12v=2.5amps with an output of 19vdc at 1.58amps.
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  • Kaylee (08-14-2018)
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#4
Chromebooks might work for you, but any power savings might be offset by all of the data they consume in operation. And any laptop with fans and vent slots means that it generates heat, and that heat comes from pulling fair amounts of current. 

Have you thought about a convertible tablet? Tablets tend to use a lot less power (no fans or vents) and you can get one with a detachable or bluetooth keyboard. Tablets can run for hours and hours on a charge.

Look at the wall chargers that most tablets use, compared to the brick chargers made for laptops. 15 watts vs 90 watts. 

Android tablets or ipads have a variety of apps for editing text. 

Windows tablets are available too, with lots of text editing options.
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  • Motrukdriver (08-12-2018), TWIH (08-13-2018), Kaylee (08-14-2018)
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#5
I wasn't going to comment as I am a Mac guy. But having just flown a few 12-hour hops with my two laptops I bought a tablet. Ok, it is an iPad but that isn't the point.

Past the OS tablets are easier on planes, last much longer than laptops and can pretty much do anything I do on my laptops now. I actually edited a bunch of footage down to a 4 minute what I did on my holiday video. It is in h265 High def too.

In our environment, they are easier to protect too. Snap cases that make them life-proof. I think that is the name of the cases.

Pick your task required/OS your comfortable with and go the tablet route.
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  • Kaylee (08-14-2018)
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#6
Chromebooks are perfect for social media-aholics that do light processing also.
available as tablets and laptops .Check hovv they charge before you buy one though.

My tab is full VV-10. Asus Transformer (first generation, it came vvith VV-8 /free upgrade to VV-10)
The atom processor gives me about 10 hours on a charge .(Not on ytoob)

Charges from a micro USB port like a phone.

I use the same (Anker fast charge) 12v charger for my phone and most everything else I have ....
Except the laptop.
stay tuned 
popeye


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#7
Thanks for the suggestions guys.
The $200 pricepoint of the Chromebook model I linked to is very attractive, and cheap enough to warrant experimenting.
I gather high end tablets are way above that range (none of you listed costs - please school me).

I was hoping for more actual Chromebook data.
TWIH was the only one to provide a data point, and it feels like an outlier (no offense).

I had already searched the net, and found little specific data, sooooo, I said to myself...
What would Hermione Granger do?!?
And, of course, hit the Library catalog, and, as well as books, was delighted to find out two in-system libraries have Chromebook loaners. Smile

I've been doing some measuring (got another kill-a-watt meter from a different branch), and am genuinely impressed at its power usage.

It's a 10" Acer model, and I got pretty close to 10 hours usage, 100% surfing the web (no videos, just slow research reading).

I'm currently at The Library, recharging it from 6%, and the power usage suddenly dropped dramatically, so time to check numbers:
charge/power is at 95%, 49.5 watt hours, after 2:07 hours:min charging.

The last 5% will probably take forever.
My plan is to more carefully record time used over the weekend, and will report back on its 2nd full charge (previous charge was only partial).

I love Libraries. Smile
"Cause how you get there is the worthier part." Shephard Book to Kaylee, Firefly
[Image: dobby.png]

2019-Dec update:
I've escaped Winter!
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  • frater secessus (09-11-2018)
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#8
I use an iPad. You can get refurbished iPads as low as $80 on Amazon to experiment with. My battery life is all day, or if I don’t use it for a month it may be down 15%. The machine I am using is over 7 years old and I am on the original battery. It was put away and not used for several years.

I’ve looked at chrome books. Let us know what you think if you get it. I still use a big clunky laptop for photo editing and I will need to upgrade to something else soon, it is getting very tired.


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  • Kaylee (08-31-2018)
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#9
All I know about CB’s is what I saw at the job, course’ those were three year old models... I do know the batteries didn't last long, and were usually constantly plugged in. They were Dell models.

TechRepublic.com had an article about extending CB battery life, they said the avg was 4 hours, and if you did a few simple things like listed below it could go longer:

“Good news, with the Chromebook (regardless of which model), it is possible to squeeze plenty of extra time from that battery (even on the Pixel). Let me off you up a few tips on how to achieve this.

Begin quote:

Dim that screen
This should come as no surprise. The brighter your screen, the more juice will be pulled from your battery. The good news is that most Chromebook displays are good enough that you can drop them down into more battery-friendly levels. I have two Chromebooks: A Pixel and an Acer C720. On the Acer I can drop the display to 50% and still view the screen in moderate light. The Pixel display is in a completely different class. It's incredibly bright and stunningly crisp. With that display, I can drop the brightness down to around 20% and have no problem viewing ─ it's that good.

Disable Bluetooth and LTE
Some Chromebooks have more radios than other. For example, the Pixel includes and LTE radio for network connectivity. Regardless of what your device has, you can eek out more battery life by turning off the various radios when not in use. To disable the Bluetooth radio, click on the notification area, and then click the Bluetooth enabled button. In the Bluetooth screen, tap the Bluetooth icon in the bottom right corner to shut the radio off:”

End of quote
"Life is short, smile while you still have teeth."
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  • Kaylee (09-17-2018)
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