I can tell you it's about a whole watt savings on this bad boy, SSDs definitely do improve idle battery life.
To clarify, I am not talking about battery "life" - as in how long until you have to replace the battery due to it no longer taking a charge. I am specifically referring to "runtime", as in how long will it provide power between charge and discharge.
So, assuming we are on the same page there, I agree but (depending on the specific HD and specific SSD), as you say, its like "a whole watt". So sure, "technically", even a single watt savings will "technically" improve runtime. But considering the CPU, GPU, screen (power hogs) as well as the RAM, mouse/pointer, USB devices and even the keyboard are all consuming power too, not sure "a whole watt" will make a "
noticeable" - and whether or not Lex "
noticed" any improvement is what I was asking about.
Complicating matters, of course, is power usage; specifically, the consistency of the demand on the battery. This would be easy to measure in a flashlight, for example, if you switched out an incandescent bulb with a LED bulb of equivalent candela since a light bulb places a constant demand on its power source.
But the demands a computer places on its power source is constantly changing from idle demands to maximum and back again, depending on what the user is doing
AS WELL AS what the OS is doing. By that I mean when the user goes idle, that is often when the OS starts doing "housekeeping" chores - like checking for security and Windows Updates, scanning for malware, indexing drives, running TRIM and wear-leveling tasks on SSDs and defragging HDs, etc.
My point there is, even for computer experts, placing a
consistent, realistic demand on a laptop battery to accurately measure and fairly compare runtimes is a real challenge, even in ideal, controlled laboratory scenarios.
Users don't use their computers in ways that place the exact same,
consistent demand on their power sources day after day, or even hour after hour. This means for laptops, the runtimes day after day will never be the same. For this reason, when my clients reported longer runtimes, I suspect it was really wishful thinking and not really astute observations.
CPU and RAM run faster... ...so it becomes equalised if not worsened in active usage scenarios.
I don't see how it could worsen. If the CPU and RAM are not being bottlenecked by storage, that simply means they will finish their assigned tasks more quickly, then go back to idle and conserving power sooner. To me, faster disk access makes the CPU and RAM work more efficiently.
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@SL2 - It appears Toothless (who is fully capable of defending himself, BTW) has let it go and moved on. I had let it go and moved on too. And the OP has made is decision and purchased a drive. Yet you continue this barrage of personal attacks.
Instead of wasting everyone's time with more of personal rants and complaints that don't provide any technical value to the thread, I recommend you use the Report button to report posts that don't meet your ideal standards. That's what the Report button is for. Let the real moderators (and there are 2 in this thread) do the moderating. They are good at their jobs and experience tells me they won't hesitate when they deem it necessary.
In the meantime, you can always put me on your ignore list. I assure you, that will not hurt my feelings.
Now if we may, let's move on. Hopefully the OP's new drive will come early and he will report all is good with his dad's upgraded computer.
No, you never said it. That was the point. It was an observation, not an accusation.
