Installed VPN - lowered laptop battery life ~20%

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bitcoin
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Installed VPN - lowered laptop battery life ~20%

#1 Post by bitcoin »

I just installed a VPN on one of my laptops a few days ago and this laptop used to get on the order of 7-8 hours per charge and now its down to around 4-5

using BatteryInfoView from Nirsoft it used to have a discharge rate from around 5-6 milliwatts (per minute?) and now its more like 8-10 - this is even when i turn the program off and kill the process. Scanned with Malwarebytes finds nothing. I have several of these laptops that are of the same brand and very similar and i always wondered why 2 of the 3 got much better battery life per charge and now a second one has lowered life too - both have the VPN program on them, the third with higher battery life and lower milliwatt usage does not.

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Midas
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Re: Installed VPN - lowered laptop battery life ~20%

#2 Post by Midas »

Perhaps the battery pack is reaching EOL? Can you compare its health across those laptops? BatteryCare might be of help here, dunno...

bitcoin
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Re: Installed VPN - lowered laptop battery life ~20%

#3 Post by bitcoin »

Midas wrote: Wed May 22, 2019 4:05 am Perhaps the battery pack is reaching EOL? Can you compare its health across those laptops? BatteryCare might be of help here, dunno...
its relatively new, only been using it for 3-4 months although it was manufactured Aug 2015

i suspect govt level malware, have hear others say if you use VPN's you become an automatic target for govt snooping

have had something similar happen to my cellphone, which is just an old style flip phone that for years i used to go a week between charges and then all of a sudden it was down to two days between charges. I figured it was the battery so i bought two more new replacements with the same result - 2 days between charges. I thought i might have had bad luck so i bought two more new batteries, same deal - 2 days between charges. Then i read online that if these govt snooping agencies decide to target you they can turn on your cellphone 24/7 so it acts as a listening device even if you power it off and this cuts way back on your battery life. Only other thing i can think of is i guess there could be kind of short circuit going on that drains the battery but leaves the phone to operate normally - this seems unlikely though.

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webfork
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Re: Installed VPN - lowered laptop battery life ~20%

#4 Post by webfork »

At least on your laptop, you might try updating your drivers. There may be built-in functionality that's turned off or not working with the software. I'm fairly sure Intel NICs have VPN optimization tools built right in.

I'm not sure what else I'd try apart from disabling any high security settings, if present. Some new or overlapping encryption tools can really tax your system.

As to services, I've tested and recommend ProtonVPN, which is very good about battery life. I didn't like TorGuard, though that wasn't due to battery issues but just poor software. Both were tested on reasonably new devices with mostly Intel components.

bitcoin
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Re: Installed VPN - lowered laptop battery life ~20%

#5 Post by bitcoin »

webfork wrote: Wed May 22, 2019 12:45 pmI didn't like TorGuard, though that wasn't due to battery issues but just poor software.
that's what i have, TorGuard

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