2/4/2021 Solar Computer the second generation
About a year ago I upgraded to a refurbished Microsoft Surface 3 which offers some really nice improvements over our older WinBook tablet. The Surface 3's 128GB of onboard storage means I no longer have to run Linux on an external USB drive which probably offers the single biggest improvement to usability, power consumption and performance.
The Surface 3 arrived with Windows 10 Professional pre-installed and I spent a whole day downloading and installing updates for it. I only plan on using Windows to run my old PC games and now that I've done the updates I expect to keep Windows permanently offline. For my primary operating system I had considered Arch Linux, Fedora, Manjaro, MX Linux and KDE Neon.
Initially I had installed Arch, but after getting the drive partitioned and base system installed along with some networking and WIFI packages, graphics drivers, Xorg and Wayland I couldn't get KDE Plasma installed as my internet connection was too unreliable and kept cutting out during the download. After sleeping on it I decided Arch was probably too maintenance heavy for someone in my situation anyway. I started downloading Fedora when I thought the aggressive release schedule of that distribution might also be tough to keep up with given the intermittent nature of internet availability so I landed on KDE Neon which offers the latest stable release of the KDE Plasma desktop environment and associated applications on top of the latest long term support version of Ubuntu offering, if memory serves, five years of support. KDE Plasma is my preferred desktop, but I had been concerned about resource consumption which is why I considered MX, with Xfce as the default environment, as my primary OS. While reading up on the subject I found that the latest versions of Plasma have significantly reduced their footprint and sure enough base memory and CPU usage is right on par with Xfce. Moreover KDE Neon doesn't come with a lot of bloat preinstalled, just the basics which makes for a streamlined install that doesn't eat up the limited internal storage of the Surface 3.
On the performance front I couldn't be more pleased with how the Surface 3 compares to my old WinBook. The Intel Atom x7-z8700 SoC is a much welcomed improvement to the WinBook's previous generation Atom 3735D. A modest bump in clock combined with a reduction in transistor size, from 22nm to 14nm, equates to improved general computing performance without sacrificing energy efficiency. The Intel HD graphics unit probably saw the biggest single improvment, of particular interest to me, moving from six execution units on the 3735D to sixteen on z8700 which delivers a very noticeable performance boost to my old PC games and Carpe Diem is now running buttery smooth on medium settings.
Tablet computers like the Surface 3 are usually knocked for their performance in reviews. Often you'll see things like "you're fine as long as all you want to do is browse the web and write emails," but I was able to program a cross-platform video game which entailed programming, debugging, 3D modelling and rendering, image editing, audio editing, animation and compilation. Clearly one can do more than watch someone fall down a flight of stairs on YouTube with these tablets.
A few other areas of improvement include double the amount of system memory, 4GB, a bigger, brighter, higher resolution display with higher color accuracy, dolby digital speakers and a bigger battery that still holds a full charge. The battery was a big issue as the one on the old WinBook simply doesn't hold a charge anymore. It had been left in storage for over a year with zero charge which is pretty bad for lithium ion batteries as I understand it.
One of the features the Surface 3 offers, and the WinBook aswell, is the use of a Micro-USB port for charging which is becoming increasingly hard to find. Micro-USB doesn't charge terribly fast, 5v/3a max input on the Surface 3, but the surface is compatible with pretty much any cell phone or tablet wall plug and all USB power banks, even the cheap ones. I rarely have access to an AC outlet so the latter is what really makes the Surface 3 work well for me. Not only does it work with my power banks, 5v/2.4a output, but I can even plug it directly into one of my Anker PowerPort Solar chargers if need be.
These days manufacturers are moving to USB-C ports with Power Delivery for charging. Power Delivery supports different charging specifications, not all of which need to be supported on a device in order to label it as supporting Power Delivery. While the full specification does offer a 5v input option it seems many manufacturers do not include this on their x86 powered devices opting, instead, to support a minimum of 9v or 12v inputs which, as of this writing, not one USB Solar charger offers. Some do support 5v input, but rarely mention it in the product specifications so you won't find out that it doesn't work until you buy it then try to plug it in.
Of course it's not important that the solar charger support power delivery because typically we charge our electronics with our power banks. Power banks that offer power delivery tend to be significantly more expensive and don't offer dual input charging which, with our solar setup, would limit recharging the bank to no more than 12 watts, which is the peak output of a single USB port on our dual output solar chargers. Our power banks would take around 12 hours to charge from 0-100% on 12 watt input which means double the time in the sun, double the wear and tear on the solar panels and, as such, roughly half the overall equipment longevity.
Consider the newer Surface Go models. The Surface Go and Go 2 can charge over USB-C, but only support 5v input when turned on, which is to say they won't charge from our 5v power banks when turned off or fully drained. You won't find that bit of pertinent information on the product page or back of the box either, you just have to find out for yourself. Additionally they only have the one USB port so one can't use the USB port for anything, like a wireless receiver for keyboard and mouse, while charging.
Back to the refurb, thus far we have experienced one problem with the Surface 3 that I did not experience with our old WinBook. Like the WinBook the Surface 3 has a single full size USB3.0 port, but on the Surface this port is limited to a maximum 5v/0.9a, just under 5 watts, output. This is not enough to power most of my USB3.0 devices which will repeatedly disconnect when plugged in. Luckily our USB hub supports an external 5v power source so when I plug it into our power bank with a USB cable that has a barrel connector on one end the power bank supplies the extra energy to power external hard drives and such. This can be somewhat of a hassle, but it works.
Additionally, in KDE Neon the battery monitor did not work out of the box, but luckily someone had already written a solution which I have linked at the bottom of this blog.
Insofar as entertainment is concerned I won't be playing the latest blockbusters anytime soon, but old favorites like Halo, Tron 2.0, Soldier of Fortune, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Bioshock and Red Faction run quite well. Halo ran great at 1280x720 resolution with only the occaisional chug and works with my bluetooth gamepad. The Elder Scrolls IV and Bioshock run fine at 800x600 and low performance settings. Power consumption while gaming looks to be around 10-12 watts so our regular old 5v/2.4a power banks can keep up if need be.
Lately there are a lot more options for x86_64 computers with decent battery life, but most of them just throw in bigger batteries, assuming eventually you'll plug into an AC outlet, rather than focusing on actual power consumption which is the bigger concern out here. Ideally I want my electronics to consume less than the rate at which my solar panels can charge my power bank, which is a mere 20 watts in peak sunlight. Plus those newer options simply don't work with my existing power plants, instead requiring more expensive Power Delivery power banks that can only use half the output my solar panels are capable of putting out leading to dramatically longer recharge times and an overall inefficient combination of devices.
As promised here is a link to a zip file containing the files necessary to get the battery monitor under Linux working on a Microsoft Surface 3. This needs to be reinstalled every time you update the Linux kernel: Surface3_Power.zip
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