Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

dell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 908 posts

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#261

Post by mekkkkkk »

gotstad wrote: post #54

I will never buy a Dell XPS laptop again. The exterior build quality seems very good, but the internals are such a mess. I cannot count how many times I have been biking home from work and heard in my headphones "Two devices connected", realizing that my Dell XPS had woken up and would - once again - be red hot when I arrived home and pulled it out of my bag.

Just curious, why would you keep putting the standby laptop in your backpack after this had occurred more than once? It sounds like hardware russian roulette.

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#262

Post by infp_arborist »

Am I the only one who is afraid that part of the reason for not fixing behaviour like this might be a nudging towards "always on" devices?

Reading through the comments it seems on Windows this might be related to WLAN and automatic updates, a rather sensitive area when it comes to security and privacy.

Happy to hear your opinions, I'd really love to be proven 100% wrong about this.

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#263

Post by cameron_b »

campl3r wrote: post #154
FlyingAvatar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the problem discussed in the article, the Dell could easily cost $3,000, and the problem would not exist a $1000 MacBook, even an Intel one. In this case, I think it’s Apple’s proper prioritization of features. Probably also that Apple is able to do this because they don’t have to work on dozens of different models at the same time. It’s amazing to me that no major PC manufacturers have really done this yet…

The problem discussed in the article happens for MacBooks too

Background tasks on Mac laptops can create a similar problem, but they are largely software created, and rarely out-of-the-box scenarios. Enterprise security tools like endpoint protection scanners and VPN clients made available for Mac but seemingly built in a different power state mentality have been shown to interrupt sleep mode and drain battery. I've also heard mixed reports of different generations behaving badly, and I haven't used all of them. In college my MBP lived in my backpack. You finish a class, close the lid watch the light change and away you go. Nothing will wake it until you open it.

Now with enterprise scanning tools running for "security" they check in daily or hourly to look for new threat signatures or what have you, no matter the power state, no matter the network state, no matter if its in a bag. Likely because the bulk of the tool was just ported from a world where you turn it off or the computer isn't off.

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#264

Post by 45ure »

JonyEpsilon wrote: post #37

I have an XPS 9500 and have found this infuriating. I think there's two separate things going on: As others have noted, S3 sleep isn't supported, only S1 "sleep to idle" sleep. But I don't think this is the direct cause of the overheating. In S1 sleep, the laptop can average something like 900mW of power usage, which is enough to annoyingly knock a few percent off your battery overnight, but not enough to make the la…

>I've never been able to figure out if this Windows actually doing something useful in "modern standby" like Windows Update, or whether it's a bug.

I asked a very similar question a few months ago. The sleep/standby modes were behaving as other people have reported, however, the fact that the battery was draining rapidly in shutdown mode, on a new Dell with a 3 month-old battery with very few cycles, was a cause for concern. Nevertheless, I tried using the CsEnabled trick, which didn't work. Eventually, after troubleshooting BIOS features, applying the latest updates and using powercfg options -- batteryreport, sleepstudy etc.

I found a solution, which is a compromise at best. The battery drain was 20% within a few hours. But now with S3 sleep state -- it drains around 8-10% in full shutdown mode over a period of 8-10 hours. A similar drain in Standby is over a period of 15-18 hours.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

https://old.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/h0r56s/getting_back_s...

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#265

Post by julianlam »

JonyEpsilon wrote: post #37

I have an XPS 9500 and have found this infuriating. I think there's two separate things going on: As others have noted, S3 sleep isn't supported, only S1 "sleep to idle" sleep. But I don't think this is the direct cause of the overheating. In S1 sleep, the laptop can average something like 900mW of power usage, which is enough to annoyingly knock a few percent off your battery overnight, but not enough to make the la…

> just with the annoying "lose 5% of your battery overnight" problem from sleeping in S1.

Just 5% would be manageable -- I probably wouldn't even notice it. It's more on the order or 20-30% for me, so if I happen to not use my laptop over the weekend, I'll come back to a completely dead laptop.

A couple times, I've opened the laptop to have it scream at me to plug it in ASAP.

It's frustrating when you put a completely charged laptop to bed and can't get going without having to hunt for a power cord.

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#267

Post by comeonseriously »

zokier wrote: post #75
vesinisa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so infuriating, because this problem has already been solved once. It's called "Hibernation", and was added in Windows 95. This should write your MEM image to disk, power the laptop completely off and allow later restoring where you left when powering your laptop back on. But laptop manufacturers (including Apple) thought it somehow smart to remove true hibernation, and replace it with some botched "deep slee…

Hibernation in Windows hasn't gone anywhere. I have a Dell laptop in front of me and it has hibernate in the start menu as normal. Problem is that hibernation is slooow so people don't like to use it

Hibernation should not be too slow now with SSDs clocking upwards of 3000MB/s

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#268

Post by d110af5ccf »

vesinisa wrote: post #102
captn3m0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55845.html I was referring to this.

AFAIK this is only an issue if you think UEFI Secure Boot and TPM are a good idea. The traditional way to implement full-disk encryption on Linux is by disabling UEFI validation and deriving the key from a passphrase rather than storing it in the TPM.

Personally I'd rather keep secure boot and just disable the kernel lockdown feature. You still gain a significant amount of security while maintaining functionality that way.

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#269

Post by ubermonkey »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #114
joeberon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to lie but Apple have put pretty high standards on what people expect to work with all laptops nowadays, and many OEMs seem unable or unwilling to try to catch up.

I have a 2020 MBP, and it's as shitty as any high end Windows laptop I've used. The thermals are awful under moderate CPU use, the fan spins when using an external monitor, the battery vampire drains when it's shut for an extended time instead of saving memory to disk and shutting off. I think what really happens is people compare $1k Dells with $3k Apples. I'm looking forward to an M1X MBP, though. That may legitima…

I'm along-term Mac laptop user, and your experience doesn't track to mine at all.

I've never had one of mine get hot in a bag. Wake from sleep is nearly instant, and always has been.

I will cop to hearing the fans more often since I switched to running two 4K screens with it, but I'm not sore about that.

Re: Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag

#270

Post by jerf »

OK, so, overheating the laptop stresses it and will eventually damage it. Got it. Easy to understand.

Question. What is it about "being in a bag" that destroys the thermal handling? I've had my laptop in my lap spontaneously power off when it gets too hot. (Which itself makes me a bit crabby about why it didn't successfully throttle down until it could at least keep running, but that's a separate gripe.) Why doesn't the laptop in the bag also eventually turn itself off?

Laptops are equipped with thermal sensors to prevent themselves from destroying themselves already. Why aren't they working here? Why don't the sensors cut things off earlier? Why isn't this a warranty issue? Isn't my hardware's thermal shutoff mechanism defective if it lets this happen?

Post reply on HN