[HN Gopher] Microsoft Is Forcing Me to Buy MacBooks - Windows Mo...
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       Microsoft Is Forcing Me to Buy MacBooks - Windows Modern Standby
        
       Author : xbmcuser
       Score  : 118 points
       Date   : 2022-12-03 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | ncann wrote:
       | I had a Dell laptop that's somewhat recent. It had Modern
       | Standby/Connected Standby on by default, so I followed the
       | instructions online to disable that and get back normal S3 sleep.
       | Things went well until one day after a Windows update Modern
       | Standby was turned back on again, and apparently the old way of
       | disabling it no longer worked, as MS removed the option in the
       | registry. Fine, I grudgingly searched and found a new way to
       | disable the stupid thing. Things seemed well initially until I
       | realized that the new way of disabling Modern Standby also broke
       | Hibernate - my laptop couldn't go into Hibernate anymore (or
       | couldn't wake up from Hibernate - I forgot the exact symptom).
       | 
       | I hate Modern Standby with a passion and I wish it a painful
       | death.
        
       | OrwellianChild wrote:
       | Main takeaway here is: Unplug laptop from power before closing
       | the lid. This (theoretically, per the video) will make the
       | Windows sleep mode operate correctly without vampire drain from
       | network usage.
        
       | pxc wrote:
       | If you're a Linux user and you can get S3 support on your
       | laptop's firmware, make sure to check out systemd's suspend-then-
       | hibernate! It gives you the same behavior as macOS, so your
       | laptop will still have good battery capacity if you close it and
       | walk away for a whole week. (It's unlikely to feel like truly
       | 'instant on' unless you're running an open-source UEFI like
       | Coreboot. But S3 resume is still very fast, just a couple seconds
       | at most.)
       | 
       | Docs:
       | 
       | https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-sle...
       | 
       | https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-sus...
        
         | zozbot234 wrote:
         | Note that suspend-then-hibernate is badly broken in some
         | systemd versions. It will always wait until the battery is
         | drained to 5% SOC before waking up and trying to hibernate - of
         | course, this can easily fail and lead to lost data, plus a
         | completely drained battery (with the ensuing wear-and-tear on
         | the battery itself). What's especially broken about this is
         | that options intended to set a different behavior for
         | hibernation are ignored, the 5% threshold is effectively made
         | mandatory. Fixes for this issue are apparently ongoing and not
         | yet ready for release.
         | 
         | Reference: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/25269
        
           | pxc wrote:
           | tl;dr: if you're not on a bleeding edge rolling release, this
           | will probably be fixed before the affected versions hit you.
           | If not, read below for a summary of what happened, a
           | workaround, and a proper fix you can apply as a patch.
           | 
           | God that's annoying as hell. Apparently the Systemd dev who
           | added this functionality intended it for a different use case
           | than mine or yours. They revised their implementation to
           | better serve their original purpose without realizing it
           | broke our (mis)use of their feature.
           | 
           | For convenience for anyone running a sufficiently bleeding
           | edge distro to have this very latest release already, here's
           | a direct link to a comment with a configuration workaround
           | which restores the old behavior: https://github.com/systemd/s
           | ystemd/issues/25269#issuecomment...
           | 
           | And here's the PR for the formal fix, which combines the old
           | behavior (new config value name, read carefully) with that
           | new 5% emergency fallback behavior, for folks who want to
           | patch it themselves:
           | 
           | https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/25374
           | 
           | It's not merged yet but maintainers have approved it for
           | merging with a few comments on config value names, so it
           | should be safe to add as a patch.
        
           | bbarnett wrote:
           | _Note that suspend-then-hibernate is badly broken in some
           | systemd versions_
           | 
           | What?! How could this be??!
        
         | BadBadJellyBean wrote:
         | Yes it's awesome. If you just shut the lid for a short time
         | it's instant on if you open it again and if you keep it shut
         | for longer it goes to hibernate. I think that is the perfect
         | compromise. And with new SSDs restore form disk doesn't really
         | take long.
        
         | cypress66 wrote:
         | Back when I sometimes used a laptop, I had that same feature
         | enabled on windows. Is that feature still supported by
         | Microsoft?
        
           | rahimnathwani wrote:
           | Are you talking about hybrid sleep? IIRC that does both
           | hibernate and sleep at the same time, i.e. it writes memory
           | to disk and then goes to sleep. I guess it would feel roughly
           | the same, except:
           | 
           | - unnecessary disk writes (for the times you slept only for a
           | short time)
           | 
           | - keeps using battery until power runs out (rather than after
           | some interval or at some non-zero battery level)
        
       | chemmail wrote:
       | Holy shit this is so bad now, even Macbooks and iPads are not
       | immune. I have an older Macbook Air and Pro and the batteries
       | both go to 0% in under a month, when they were shut down, don't
       | know what they are doing. I also have 2 iPad Pro 11" that just
       | drain sitting there, under a week it would be almost dead, i
       | didn't even look at them. I thought it was something wrong with
       | my iPad at first, but a second one does the exact same thing.
       | 
       | It wasn't always like this. We still use an iPad 2 and 4 for CC
       | processing and they don't need to be charged for 2-3 months at a
       | time!!! It is definitely on newer devices. I have a Yoga 1 that i
       | can have in sleep for almost a month and I can still have it turn
       | on with some percentage of battery i can do a few things.
       | 
       | What Microsoft and everyone else it seems, is doing is maddening,
       | the batteries are getting worst, and you simply cannot just rely
       | on a device to be usable anymore without being next to a power
       | outlet and probably even waiting 15minutes before they can even
       | power up.
        
       | AaronFriel wrote:
       | I've experienced this and arrived at the same solution as Linus'
       | team recommends: unplug laptop, then close lid. This worked for
       | Dell, HP, and Microsoft Surface branded laptops ever since S0 was
       | introduced in Windows 8 or was it 8.1? Either way.
       | 
       | It's even sillier when using a dock with the lid closed: unplug,
       | open lid until screen wakes, then close lid.
       | 
       | The real shame here is that the supply chain seems to be moving
       | away from supporting S3, as the video notes, with hardware (CPU
       | or motherboard) and firmware support disappearing in newer
       | models.
        
       | ssdspoimdsjvv wrote:
       | I thought my new laptop was broken when I noticed this. Certainly
       | this could not have been done intentional. I would close my
       | laptop at night and come back the next morning to find out my
       | battery was dead (and quite hot). Did some Googling and found out
       | this is just how it works nowadays. I then changed my power
       | settings to have my computer go into hibernation when I close the
       | lid.
       | 
       | WTF Microsoft.
        
       | lizardactivist wrote:
       | _" This allows laptops to perform small house-keeping tasks while
       | they're asleep"_
       | 
       | - or to be remotely logged on to and operated, without your
       | knowing.
       | 
       | A computer system that is on and connected the internet while you
       | thought it was turned off, is IMO an attack vector.
        
       | pbnjeh wrote:
       | Finally, an explanation.
       | 
       | I don't run around enough to care about quick/instant startup.
       | Despite using the Windows 10 Windows menu Power command to "Shut
       | down" my Thinkpad X1C6, I took it out of its bag the following
       | day, on a few not too infrequent occasions, to find it warm and
       | "doing stuff" (Windows Update sticks in my mind). Moreso than a
       | lowered charge, the idea of it cooking itself inside its padded
       | sleeve and bag caused me concern.
       | 
       | After a bit of investigation, I settled on training myself to
       | always open/use a command window to issue "shutdown /s".
       | 
       | No more warm or hot, drained laptop since then.
       | 
       | I agree with Linus: Microsoft's behavior and indifference WRT
       | this problem is reprehensible. For me, it is another example of
       | how Microsoft has not -- fundamentally -- changed since its E3
       | days. The 900 pound gorilla that we will, per force, accommodate.
       | Amazing how entrenched such cultural mindsets are.
       | 
       | By the way, the X1C6 as configured by Lenovo does not support S3.
       | Since Linus, in his demo of a possible BIOS configuration change,
       | was using a Thinkpad, maybe I'll get lucky with that option --
       | watch the video to see whether you might have such a fix for your
       | system.
        
         | sydney6 wrote:
         | I have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen6, and indeed there is the
         | "Linux" sleep-state option, which has been working for years
         | just fine for me. I'm running a Linux-based OS. Before Lenovo
         | added this option via bios update (via fwupd:), i indeed had to
         | manually manipulate the DSDT to achieve S3 sleep.
        
           | pbnjeh wrote:
           | Thank you!
        
       | gtvwill wrote:
       | Yeah well apples terrible ethics in business and attitude towards
       | proprietary systems and code have ment I've never bought an apple
       | device over the last 20 years and I've advised plenty not to and
       | it'll keep being like that till apple sort their shit out. Like
       | support unions for their workers, not try and lock everything
       | behind closed wall systems, not go against the grain of like the
       | whole industry just so they can produce a bunch more e-waste like
       | the bs lightning ports and kickback against usb-c. Stop making
       | unfixable devices, devices bricked because YOLO apple won't make
       | a firmware update and refuse to release the code so anyone else
       | can update these paperweights (I'm looking at you early gen iPad
       | from my parents that just no longer can even browse the web cus
       | apple won't update it, it's a 800 buck paperweight now!).
       | 
       | Lol the list can go on, don't even start me on the bs predatory
       | business tactics they push with terrible software like iPhoto and
       | it's "features".
       | 
       | Apple can get stuffed.no shitty sleep crap on a laptop will make
       | me support the dumpster fire of a brand that is apple or reduce
       | my morals to do so.
        
         | nickthegreek wrote:
         | You seem to have very strong feelings about this topic. You
         | could chose Linux, it's not a binary choice.
        
           | replygirl wrote:
           | 2023 is the year...
        
             | bamboozled wrote:
             | This joke while funny, was old in 1999 and is certainly
             | ridiculous now in 2022.
             | 
             | I honestly can't think of there be any reason why one
             | wouldn't run Linux on the desktop , it's perfectly fine,
             | I'd say excellent for 98% of the tasks I do.
             | 
             | Video editors, designers and photographers probably
             | struggle a bit but I'd say nearly all of those people use a
             | Mac anyway. I have both myself. Linux and an iPad Pro.
        
               | autotune wrote:
               | There is still the problem of gaming. With tools like
               | CrossOver from CodeWeavers and shadow.tech things are
               | getting better as well as some native support on Steam,
               | but at this point I still need a dedicated Windows
               | desktop specifically for gaming and nothing else (I use a
               | MacBook Pro for personal projects, work, and Alpine for
               | Docker to run production services at work).
        
               | goosedragons wrote:
               | Besides anti-cheat gaming just mostly works these days on
               | Linux. It's pretty nuts how much it's improved with
               | things like Proton.
        
               | autotune wrote:
               | I'll have to look into it again. I am still scarred from
               | the early days of trying to get a given Linux distro
               | working painlessly on the laptop.
        
             | the_third_wave wrote:
             | You're 30 years late as far as I'm concerned, SLS on tape
             | followed by Slackware followed by RedHat followed by Debian
             | in an unbroken line. OK, I was editor for a unix-related
             | publication which gave me an extra incentive but on the
             | desktop (and laptop, an anaemic Toshiba with a black and
             | white sluggish LCD, 4 MB of RAM but quite a good keyboard,
             | no mouse because that wasn't a thing yet) it did run ever
             | since then.
        
               | em-bee wrote:
               | heh, i followed the same trajectory, except starting with
               | SLS on floppies and after debian i tried ubuntu and then
               | worked with foresight before switching to fedora...
        
             | tstrimple wrote:
             | For what it's worth, this is the year I've stuck with a
             | Linux desktop the longest. Thanks to the work from Valve,
             | even modern game releases have been playing reliably for
             | me. Linux still has plenty of issues, but it's been a very
             | stable platform so far and that's even with me torturing
             | myself by using NixOS.
        
         | Kukumber wrote:
         | both apple and microsoft are bad, and yet apple managed to make
         | a better laptop, cherry on the top, with ARM!
        
           | phpisthebest wrote:
           | Microsoft does not really pretend to be good
        
             | nonrandomstring wrote:
             | It is surprising how long some things can survive beyond
             | their due date. As a parallel; everyone knew the Soviet
             | system was rubbish, beyond fixing, but stuck with a
             | shrugging, de-facto acceptance of something nobody believed
             | in and couldn't change. It was the momentum of stubborn
             | ideology and resignation that kept it going. To me,
             | Microsoft represent a similar failure mode unique to
             | capitalism, where pure momentum of accumulated capital can
             | prop up a dead company. In their heyday Microsoft were so
             | successful and made so much money that today a mixture of
             | memories, brand nostalgia and bought influence can keep the
             | show going despite an abysmal product.
        
               | phpisthebest wrote:
               | In the consumer market that is probally true
               | 
               | Microsoft is still king of Enterprise because of vertical
               | integration, centralized management / security tooling,
               | and Microsoft Excel (which really has no competitor)
               | 
               | Linux and Apple both lack the centralized end point
               | management / identity / and configuration that AD, Azure
               | AD, Group Policy, ConfigMgr, etc offer for the windows
               | platform
        
             | Kukumber wrote:
             | They do pretend to be good when they lobby European and
             | other foreign governments or when they bribe them [1,2,3,4]
             | 
             | [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-
             | settlement-idUS...
             | 
             | [2] - https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accu
             | sed_of_...
             | 
             | [3] - https://emerging-europe.com/news/microsoft-
             | pays-25-million-u...
             | 
             | [4] - https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-
             | accused...
        
       | sydney6 wrote:
       | I don't even understand why Microsoft is forcing S0ix this hard,
       | i.e. as i understand, forcing OEMs to remove the option for S3
       | via certification programmes, etc. Suspend/Resume is painful
       | enough as is, with Thunderbolt devices on a picky pcie-connection
       | and else, even with their "improvements".. What a state of
       | affairs. Half an hour ago, my AMD Desktop freezed from
       | suspend/resume due to a Mellanox ConnectX-3 NIC not properly
       | resuming/entering from sleep. Gotta try to reduce the allocated
       | tx/rx-rings from the kernel module, surely, then everything will
       | be, must be good to go. Oh, well..
        
         | zootboy wrote:
         | > I don't even understand why Microsoft is forcing S0ix this
         | hard
         | 
         | Because for whatever inexplicable reason, they've gotten it
         | into their heads that laptops need to achieve feature parity
         | with smartphones. Smartphones get to be always-on, so laptops
         | apparently need to as well.
         | 
         | It's completely ridiculous, and I'm quite upset at Microsoft
         | for continually trying to destroy the PC ecosystem in new and
         | creative ways.
        
           | sydney6 wrote:
           | Microsoft has a lot of insight about the Windows ecosystem
           | works and crashes, and i'm even willing to believe that
           | there's some sane technical reasoning behind all this.
           | Perhaps the state of S3 is indeed this FUBAR, let's not
           | forget, that MS cannot control the windows ecosystem like
           | apple does with MacOS. MS has no/very little power over OEMs
           | not conforming or only partly implementing standards, and yet
           | has to deal with whatever hardware customers stick into their
           | ~2 billion windows installations.
        
       | leros wrote:
       | I had a similar issue with my MacBook and the fix was even
       | sillier. I plug my MacBook into a USB-C monitor, which also
       | supplies power. Upgrading the monitor firmware fixed my MacBook
       | sleep issues.
        
         | kitsunesoba wrote:
         | The way Apple typically writes its support for third party
         | devices assumes strict adherence to the spec in question, with
         | funny things happening when they don't. Totally different
         | philosophy from MS where writing in hacks to accommodate badly
         | behaving/out of spec peripherals is just another Tuesday.
         | 
         | With that in mind it's not too surprising that a display
         | firmware update fixed your problem.
        
       | rPlayer6554 wrote:
       | I've had this exact issue with my Dell XPS13 and it pushed me to
       | move to a MacBook.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-03 23:00 UTC)