Laptop questions

[Roy]

Hello group
As It pertains to hardware I would like to know.

Supposing you use the particular laptop as your main computer 7 days
a week.
Which is better for a notebook in terms of longevity of its
components ( level of depreciation also) : having always too boot up
when and then power shut down after use, or just have it the lid
closed( hibernate?). and then just open it as soon as its to be
used .?


Another question, what is the difference in time between the boot up
and the recovering from hibernation? The particular notebook had SSD
drive , core-i7,8gig ram, 1gig video card.

TIA

Roy

 

[Paul]

Hello group
As It pertains to hardware I would like to know.

Supposing you use the particular laptop as your main computer 7 days
a week.
Which is better for a notebook in terms of longevity of its
components ( level of depreciation also) : having always too boot up
when and then power shut down after use, or just have it the lid
closed( hibernate?). and then just open it as soon as its to be
used .?


Another question, what is the difference in time between the boot up
and the recovering from hibernation? The particular notebook had SSD
drive , core-i7,8gig ram, 1gig video card.

TIA

Roy

I do a complete shutdown on mine, neither bothering with sleep
nor hibernate. It's because I don't know when I'll be using it
next. It's not my "main computer".

While in theory, you can pretend to do things to extend battery life,
the battery will just die from old age. So while you could try to extend
the life by following certain practices, I don't think it really helps.
Just use it, and when the battery has no capacity left, buy a new one.

The fun comes, when you go to buy a replacement battery. Since the
battery ages as soon as it leaves the factory, it's important to buy
them "fresh". But when you need that replacement, it could have been
sitting on a shelf for three years, and already be an "old man".

*******

If you use hibernate, that writes out some info to the SSD. Writing the
hiberfile wears the SSD a tiny bit. But not enough to worry about. It
might be using, say, 1/300000 of the lifespan.

There are certainly differences, between what a regular rotating hard drive
can take, and what an SSD can take. For example, if I operate a regular
rotating hard drive as a TV recorder (writing constantly all day long), I can
expect to easily get 3-5 years from the drive doing that. The drive doesn't
care, unless you're shaking the crap out of it constantly, in which case a
rotating hard drive might last a year or so.

If you swapped in an SSD for an application like that, it would die in no time.
If you have massive amounts of writes to do, an SSD isn't the best choice.
If you do "casual writes", such as you might see on your laptop, it'll last
as long as the other parts of the laptop. Doing a little email isn't going
to make a dent in the lifespan.

There are differences between MLC and SLC flash based SSDs. And as time
moves on, the quality difference will become more pronounced. SLC lasts
longer, and as they keep cranking the density on the MLC, we'll see MLC
get worse and worse on life span. The very latest flash chips, are rated
for 60% of the write cycles of the previous generation. The longer you
wait to buy a non-enterprise (consumer) SSD, the worse they get. The
manufacturers will do anything to pump up the Gigabytes, at the price of
write cycles. The SLC SSDs will be more expensive to buy, because they
might be considered to be "enterprise" quality drives. If MLC had never
been invented, we'd be so much better off. We'd have tiny drives, suited
for booting, but they'd last longer.

*******

Since you have a "high power" laptop, you can expect it to wear a bit more
from thermal issues. It may have a higher operating temperature than my
underpowered laptop. But you'll have more fun with yours If I tried
gaming on mine, it would be a slide show. I haven't even tried loading
any games on it. It just uses the chipset GPU, which is roughly the equivalent
of an FX5200.

Paul

 

[Roy]

Thanks for your reply Paul!
But it brings me more questions , I hope you don’t mind and have
enough patience for my curiosity….

Previously it was my habit to just shut down the notebook every time
its idle, but have noticed lots of my workmates never bother to do
so . If I ask them why they chose to just close the lid instead of
shutting it down, the majority of them says its too much of a hassle
for the user and added stress for the hardware if you only have to
use it intermittently the rest of the day.

Therefore this led me to post his question in this computer hardware
related discussion.

Now I am posting my comments and more questions .

I do a complete shutdown on mine, neither bothering with sleep
nor hibernate. It's because I don't know when I'll be using it
next. It's not my "main computer".

Hmm so every time you use its your routine, Now supposing the
notebook is not used for few hours then opened after that, would it be
advisable to do the open and shut down routine instead of setting it
to hibernate?

While in theory, you can pretend to do things to extend battery life,
the battery will just die from old age. So while you could try to extend
the life by following certain practices, I don't think it really helps.
Just use it, and when the battery has no capacity left, buy a new one.

Yes that was one of my concern as I noticed every time I start the
notebook its uses more battery juice than when opened from hibernate
stage, therefore if I just shut it down once and day and leave it to
hibernate the rest of it , it will do good service to my battery .
What is your opinion on this?

The fun comes, when you go to buy a replacement battery. Since the
battery ages as soon as it leaves the factory, it's important to buy
them "fresh". But when you need that replacement, it could have been
sitting on a shelf for three years, and already be an "old man".

Hmm never thought of that! I thought before that a battery lying
unused in the suppliers depot would remain in pristine conditions …
That is enlightening information, Thanks for that!
Now the questions is supposing I replace my battery with new one how
can the user guarantee that the battery is still fresh….I have no idea
either how the kept their battery stocks…

If you use hibernate, that writes out some info to the SSD. Writing the
hiberfile wears the SSD a tiny bit. But not enough to worry about. It
might be using, say, 1/300000 of the lifespan.
If you swapped in an SSD for an application like that, it would die in no time.
If you have massive amounts of writes to do, an SSD isn't the best choice.
If you do "casual writes", such as you might see on your laptop, it'll last
as long as the other parts of the laptop. Doing a little email isn't going
to make a dent in the lifespan.

Huh? I thought that SSD is a lot better than HDD with regards to
lifespan, so you imply that in the long run the platter type disk
have better longevity and more robust to read and write cycle than
the flash drives?

There are differences between MLC and SLC flash based SSDs. And as time
moves on, the quality difference will become more pronounced. SLC lasts
longer, and as they keep cranking the density on the MLC, we'll see MLC
get worse and worse on life span. The very latest flash chips, are rated
for 60% of the write cycles of the previous generation. The longer you
wait to buy a non-enterprise (consumer) SSD, the worse they get. The
manufacturers will do anything to pump up the Gigabytes, at the price of
write cycles. The SLC SSDs will be more expensive to buy, because they
might be considered to be "enterprise" quality drives. If MLC had never
been invented, we'd be so much better off. We'd have tiny drives, suited
for booting, but they'd last longer.

Never did it concern me about the difference between the MLC and SLC,
but supposing you had a quad SSD arranged in RAID 0 , what would be
the type of SSD being used by the manufacturer; is it t he MLC or the
SLC…?

Since you have a "high power" laptop, you can expect it to wear a bit more
from thermal issues. It may have a higher operating temperature than my
underpowered laptop. But you'll have more fun with yours If I tried
gaming on mine, it would be a slide show. I haven't even tried loading
any games on it. It just uses the chipset GPU, which is roughly the equivalent
of an FX5200.

My unit can be considered powerful for an ultraportable unit( just
less than 1.5kg) but I noticed its runs cooler even for the whole
day,the only heat I feel is from the exit vents for the dedicated
INVIDIA graphics chip where if you place your hand long enough ,it
might get scalded.

Roy

 

[Paul]

Hmm so every time you use its your routine, Now supposing the
notebook is not used for few hours then opened after that, would it be
advisable to do the open and shut down routine instead of setting it
to hibernate?

If you sleep the computer, the main battery continues to be used to
maintain the RAM contents. If you run the battery down until it's
empty, the laptop may shut down immediately. That could be why they
invented hybrid sleep, where not only are the RAM contents kept
in RAM, but also written to the disk. If the computer loses power
due to a drained battery, the computer can use the hiberfile on a
restart, to return to the same session.

Generally, the computer takes care of itself. Unless the user
manual warns otherwise, you can just use it. Hardware has
advanced enough, that the computer knows a lot about what is
going on. The hardware designers have choices, if they want to
use them.

Yes that was one of my concern as I noticed every time I start the
notebook its uses more battery juice than when opened from hibernate
stage, therefore if I just shut it down once and day and leave it to
hibernate the rest of it , it will do good service to my battery .
What is your opinion on this?

A lithium battery is not supposed to be patterned by the way it is
charged and discharged. There is a claim, that leaving it full charged
to 100%, and then leaving it in the corner for six months, isn't the
best of conditions. It may be better for long term storage, to leave
it half charged. However, if you planned on not using the laptop
for that long, you should remove the main battery. If a lithium battery
is discharged below a certain level, the charger is not allowed to
charge it on the next startup. In normal usage that won't happen, but
in some storage scenarios, it's possible it could drain to the point
that it cannot safely be charged.

Hibernation, may cause all power to be removed from the motherboard.
In which case, you may have more battery capacity left later when
you need it. If you sleep, and the computer really keeps contents in
RAM, that uses perhaps 1 watt of electricity, so will eventually
drain the battery. The end result, is the next time you go to use
the computer, you may have to plug in the charger before the
laptop will respond. If the laptop has hybrid sleep, your session
will be saved. If it has "ordinary sleep", the session contents would
be lost.

Hmm never thought of that! I thought before that a battery lying
unused in the suppliers depot would remain in pristine conditions …
That is enlightening information, Thanks for that!
Now the questions is supposing I replace my battery with new one how
can the user guarantee that the battery is still fresh….I have no idea
either how the kept their battery stocks…

Talk to the vendor first. Ask the vendor, what is their policy on batteries.
Do they stock large quantities, so that stale stock is the result ?
The battery may come with a factory date stamp, or it's even possible
there is electronic information in a smart battery, to indicate when
it left the factory. I haven't investigated this, because this is
my first laptop, and my battery is still working. But I have read
complaints from people, who are getting a lowered capacity from
their replacement battery.

Huh? I thought that SSD is a lot better than HDD with regards to
lifespan, so you imply that in the long run the platter type disk
have better longevity and more robust to read and write cycle than
the flash drives?

A rotating hard drive has moving parts. They can wear. I've had one hard
drive at work, that lasted for around seven years of pretty well 24/7
operation (part of a Unix workstation). But the hard drive needed to be
rotated 90 degrees from its normal orientation, when powering the system
from a cold start. The mechanical parts had too much friction for the
drive to start up properly in its normal orientation. That hard drive
had a ball bearing motor (not an FDB). The motor was noisy, but there
was no indication I was about to lose any data. That's a pretty good
lifespan. The drive was still working, when it was finally retired
from service.

Modern drives have fluid dynamic bearings. Those have zero friction, as
long as there is lubrication in the reservoir. Motors can fail at any
time, if the lubrication is missing. The motor will stall and not turn,
if the lubrication is gone.

Other parts that wear, are the bearing for the head assembly, which is
a good quality bearing (cannot have much play in it, or the drive won't
track properly). There is a flex cable which connects the electrical
end of things, to the controller board. Each seek, will flex the cable.
I've never been able to find any information on how many cycles that
cable can take. Whether it is 10**6 or 10**9 or whatever. When a
rotating hard drive is used in an Internet server application, where it
constantly seeks 24/7, such a drive lasts about a year, before it falls
apart and fails. So that number should give you some idea how long
a good quality drive lasts, under extreme service (never rests).

SSDs on the other hand, can only last for the total_data * write_cycles
amount of writes. Say the flash is only rated for 3000 writes. The SSD
is 100GB. Once you write 300,000 GB of write operations to the SSD disk
(write, delete, write again), it is finished. Flash blocks will fail,
the spare area will be used up, and eventually CRC errors will be reported
to the user, or (more likely), the drive will simply cease to communicate
with the computer.

The less writing you do to the SSD, the longer it lasts. If you did no
writes at all, then the drive still has reliability issues that can
cause some units to drop out. But being a solid state device, the
overall reliability is pretty good. The reliability then, has two
components. A "bathtub curve" type reliability associated generally
with electronic components, with a "wearout" phenomenon added to the
result. If you do lots of writes, such as write continuously to the
drive on purpose (say, some kind of benchmark), then it won't last
very long at all. If the SSD drive was rated for 200MB/sec write rate,
how long would it take to hit 300,000 GB at 0.2GB/sec ? About 17 days ?
So if you abuse my example SSD drive, it could wear out in as
little as 17 days.

Never did it concern me about the difference between the MLC and SLC,
but supposing you had a quad SSD arranged in RAID 0 , what would be
the type of SSD being used by the manufacturer; is it t he MLC or the
SLC…?

Unless you pay "enterprise prices", the drive will be made with MLC flash.
If an MLC drive cost $200, and an SLC drive cost $800, will a company
just "giving you" an SLC drive stay in business for very long ? No.
So if you want SLC, you have to actively shop for it. It's expensive.

My unit can be considered powerful for an ultraportable unit( just
less than 1.5kg) but I noticed its runs cooler even for the whole
day,the only heat I feel is from the exit vents for the dedicated
INVIDIA graphics chip where if you place your hand long enough ,it
might get scalded.

Play a game, or run Folding At Home, or some other 100% loading
application. You should understand how the unit operates under
full load. Sitting idling in the desktop, is not an indicator
of how bad it can get.

The Prime95 stress test is multithreaded, and will give you some
idea how hot your CPU can get.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft

While Prime95 is running, then you can start this benchmark, and
load up your GPU as well.

http://majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html

The thing is, if you play a game with a "high power" laptop, the
GPU temperature can go up to 100C, which causes mechanical stress
on the GPU. Some of the parts in the laptop, have thermal limiters,
and will crank down their efforts, if they get too hot. But the
temperatures allowed in there, are still quite hot. Continued
burst cycling (play a game for five minutes, go get coffee),
where the component temperature goes up and down, causes
fatigue. And even if the component doesn't fail, the solder
joints can fail from the stresses.

Years ago, stereo systems used to have the high power transistors
fail on them, after several thousand temperature cycles. Hardware
has come a long way since then, and they're better able to
match the thermal expansion coefficients, or redistribute the
stresses in modern components (with materials like underfill).

 

[Roy]

If you sleep the computer, the main battery continues to be used to
maintain the RAM contents. If you run the battery down until it's
empty, the laptop may shut down immediately. That could be why they
invented hybrid sleep, where not only are the RAM contents kept
in RAM, but also written to the disk. If the computer loses power
due to a drained battery, the computer can use the hiberfile on a
restart, to return to the same session.

Generally, the computer takes care of itself. Unless the user
manual warns otherwise, you can just use it. Hardware has
advanced enough, that the computer knows a lot about what is
going on. The hardware designers have choices, if they want to
use them.



A lithium battery is not supposed to be patterned by the way it is
charged and discharged. There is a claim, that leaving it full charged
to 100%, and then leaving it in the corner for six months, isn't the
best of conditions. It may be better for long term storage, to leave
it half charged. However, if you planned on not using the laptop
for that long, you should remove the main battery. If a lithium battery
is discharged below a certain level, the charger is not allowed to
charge it on the next startup. In normal usage that won't happen, but
in some storage scenarios, it's possible it could drain to the point
that it cannot safely be charged.

Hibernation, may cause all power to be removed from the motherboard.
In which case, you may have more battery capacity left later when
you need it. If you sleep, and the computer really keeps contents in
RAM, that uses perhaps 1 watt of electricity, so will eventually
drain the battery. The end result, is the next time you go to use
the computer, you may have to plug in the charger before the
laptop will respond. If the laptop has hybrid sleep, your session
will be saved. If it has "ordinary sleep", the session contents would
be lost.





Talk to the vendor first. Ask the vendor, what is their policy on batteries.
Do they stock large quantities, so that stale stock is the result ?
The battery may come with a factory date stamp, or it's even possible
there is electronic information in a smart battery, to indicate when
it left the factory. I haven't investigated this, because this is
my first laptop, and my battery is still working. But I have read
complaints from people, who are getting a lowered capacity from
their replacement battery.



A rotating hard drive has moving parts. They can wear. I've had one hard
drive at work, that lasted for around seven years of pretty well 24/7
operation (part of a Unix workstation). But the hard drive needed to be
rotated 90 degrees from its normal orientation, when powering the system
from a cold start. The mechanical parts had too much friction for the
drive to start up properly in its normal orientation. That hard drive
had a ball bearing motor (not an FDB). The motor was noisy, but there
was no indication I was about to lose any data. That's a pretty good
lifespan. The drive was still working, when it was finally retired
from service.

Modern drives have fluid dynamic bearings. Those have zero friction, as
long as there is lubrication in the reservoir. Motors can fail at any
time, if the lubrication is missing. The motor will stall and not turn,
if the lubrication is gone.

Other parts that wear, are the bearing for the head assembly, which is
a good quality bearing (cannot have much play in it, or the drive won't
track properly). There is a flex cable which connects the electrical
end of things, to the controller board. Each seek, will flex the cable.
I've never been able to find any information on how many cycles that
cable can take. Whether it is 10**6 or 10**9 or whatever. When a
rotating hard drive is used in an Internet server application, where it
constantly seeks 24/7, such a drive lasts about a year, before it falls
apart and fails. So that number should give you some idea how long
a good quality drive lasts, under extreme service (never rests).

SSDs on the other hand, can only last for the total_data * write_cycles
amount of writes. Say the flash is only rated for 3000 writes. The SSD
is 100GB. Once you write 300,000 GB of write operations to the SSD disk
(write, delete, write again), it is finished. Flash blocks will fail,
the spare area will be used up, and eventually CRC errors will be reported
to the user, or (more likely), the drive will simply cease to communicate
with the computer.

The less writing you do to the SSD, the longer it lasts. If you did no
writes at all, then the drive still has reliability issues that can
cause some units to drop out. But being a solid state device, the
overall reliability is pretty good. The reliability then, has two
components. A "bathtub curve" type reliability associated generally
with electronic components, with a "wearout" phenomenon added to the
result. If you do lots of writes, such as write continuously to the
drive on purpose (say, some kind of benchmark), then it won't last
very long at all. If the SSD drive was rated for 200MB/sec write rate,
how long would it take to hit 300,000 GB at 0.2GB/sec ? About 17 days ?
So if you abuse my example SSD drive, it could wear out in as
little as 17 days.





Unless you pay "enterprise prices", the drive will be made with MLC flash..
If an MLC drive cost $200, and an SLC drive cost $800, will a company
just "giving you" an SLC drive stay in business for very long ? No.
So if you want SLC, you have to actively shop for it. It's expensive.



Play a game, or run Folding At Home, or some other 100% loading
application. You should understand how the unit operates under
full load. Sitting idling in the desktop, is not an indicator
of how bad it can get.

The Prime95 stress test is multithreaded, and will give you some
idea how hot your CPU can get.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft

While Prime95 is running, then you can start this benchmark, and
load up your GPU as well.

http://majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html

The thing is, if you play a game with a "high power" laptop, the
GPU temperature can go up to 100C, which causes mechanical stress
on the GPU. Some of the parts in the laptop, have thermal limiters,
and will crank down their efforts, if they get too hot. But the
temperatures allowed in there, are still quite hot. Continued
burst cycling (play a game for five minutes, go get coffee),
where the component temperature goes up and down, causes
fatigue. And even if the component doesn't fail, the solder
joints can fail from the stresses.

Years ago, stereo systems used to have the high power transistors
fail on them, after several thousand temperature cycles. Hardware
has come a long way since then, and they're better able to
match the thermal expansion coefficients, or redistribute the
stresses in modern components (with materials like underfill).

Thanks a lot for the voluminous information!

Unfortunately I never play games on computers but I do heavy
multitasking ,on this PC ,occasionally do photo and video editing
CAD work etc, I am not sure if that provide equivalent stress to
this notebook. Yes the notebook surface can get warm if I run such
task.. and the task manager shows CPU load approaching 90% .

Roy

 

[Roy]

One way to extend the life of your laptop is to pull the battery when
running off of AC power.  The laptop will run cooler and this will also
extend the life of the battery.

Hi Bill, thanks for your comments.
But may i ask ....
How is that happening....?
With my unit that have hybrid graphics, that when its on battery
juice the graphics it runs on stamina mode so there i s less power
consumption, but when in AC power it runs on speed mode where the
dedicated graphics run at speed mode and produces more heat..

Roy