- Windows 10 cpu cycling: WTF. On Apple, when you work on battery, you notice ZERO lag or performance issues. In Windows, cpu cycle scaling (e.g. going from 900 MHz to 2 GHZ because compiling, booting up adobe, whatever) sucks. It is slow. It always lags behind.
This is probably due to overly aggressive power savings, it's really bad on Core I3's.
If you go into power settings in control panel, fins minimal CPU state and up in a a few percent while on battery, that will knock the edge off of the problem and not effect battery that much. You can also bump the max performance up a bit, which will help with things like Adobe.
That said, you are wrong about it not effecting Apples, there is a VERY obvious difference on my Macbook Air when on battery vs power when doing something CPU intensive. Prepping large 3d prints shows it very quickly, though it's one of the few times you can see it. Best I can tell Apple power management knocks you down to about 30% cpu power, however it is a bit less noticeable simple because Apple spent a lot of time building OSX to work on low power systems, possibly in preparation for a switch to ARM.
This theory is backed up by the fact that OSX will only run so fast. My 4th gen I7/ssd/8gb Air is almost as fast as my I7 2600k/ssd/16gb, which is nearly as fast as my 6700k/ssd/16gb. While yo may think they are all I7's, no, there is 4 generations spanned, plus a laptop. Worse, if you install Linux or Windows there is a MASSIVE difference in performance. Mac, you can barely tell under normal use.
Basically, it's not that Macs are not effected, it's more that Macs are so kneecapped on performance that it can be difficult to see a difference unless you run something that really taxes it.
- Trackpad accidental clicks: This is super annoying and has to do with precision trackpad. Update drivers? Configure it differently? Bull****. It is just rushed out, the algorithm is flaky. Sometimes it is perfect, sometimes it misclicks on everything. One day is like "great, dunno what happened yesterday".
Apple spends a lot on touchpads, there is probably only 2 or 3 Windows machines that match it.
Windows people generally don't know how good Apple touchpads are. Mac you can pretty much get by without a mouse using the touchpad for regular use (yes, Windows users, I'm serious, it's that good!), but for any other computer, for any lengthy use, you will want a mouse. Linux touchpad implementation on a Mac is very close to Mac performance, it lacks a few gestures, but otherwise works well.
Touchpads, keyboards, hard drives and internal frame structure is where PC manufacturers often save money because they are not easy to see or test, and you probably won't notice them in a 10 second demo in a store. If you want something less likely to have these problems, you need to go corporate or small business laptops such as the traditional X or T series. The Carbon is sort of a hybrid between home and corporate, it's nice but they still cut some corners they shouldn't have in the name of savings and looking flashy.
- Wireless performance: On my workstation with LAN, I get 22-25 MB/s. On my Thinkpad, never beyond 7 MB/s. WHY? I have it maxxed out in energy settings. I cannot get it beyond 7 MB/s. My old MBP (2010! with older wireless standards) gets around 15 MB/s, easily.
Wireless standards are tricky, full of loopholes, and lack stringent standards. Your performance may be as much about your router and antennas as it may be about what else is connected to your router and the protocols they can handle. Not all are created equal.
By default the router will dumb down to the lowest common denominator connected to it on that band, however, this is subject to supported protocols and the handshake. Those who remember dial up will remember how some days you could get max speed and other days, nope. I once bought a modem 40% faster and due to how the new one handled compression, lost 80% bandwidth compared to the older modem I had. So much for being faster!
Also, newer protocols often have shorter range.
Yes, AC can support higher rates, but the range is less and ANY interference can completely destroy the connection. Linus Tech Tips actually had one router lose connection at 3 feet simply because some sat between the router and laptop.
Point is, faster isn't always.
One thing you can try here is set your router to not use AC and instead limit it to wireless N or even G. Sounds counter productive, but can work, at least until you can find a guide where someone has actually solved the issue. Of course this is based on the idea there is just a settings conflict, which does happen.
- Accidental wakes at night: "Hi, wanna update Win10?" FFFUUUUUUU.. I wanna SLEEP. I turned of wake on lan in Bios, i turned of wake in windows 10 wherever I could find a setting for it. STILL it wakes up.
Windows can do this for updates, there is also some programs that will do it.
The only install of Win10 I have is on a netbook, which I don't even have handy to lookup the setting to stop the update wakes (I hate win10), maybe someone who has it can elaborate. It's like smart or hybrid wake or update... And as mentioned it could be a bios issue.
Basically it can be a hassle to track down the culprit, my advice to people is if you are home and plugged in, don't worry about it, and if you plan on sticking your laptop in a bag, shut it off. I've had several come on and get super hot. While this sucked a few years ago, with today's SSDs, boot times are about as fast as wake times, so does it really matter?
Even if you solve it, I still recommend shutting down when you put it in a bag, I've had two systems wake in a duffle bag and nearly damaged both laptops.
- Slow webpage renderingWhatever browser I use, rendering pages is slower even than my old MBP. Probably a combination of cpu cycle scaling and wifi performance, but it is super annoying.
Probably the cpu idle being set to low as mentioned before, most web pages render just fine on a 3meg connection. You may want to check lag, but I doubt that is the problem since it would effect everything. You may also want to check your cache settings, if it;s too small or too large it can effect it. Also any plugins or extensions can REALLY create issues with lag and start times. My Firefox used to be really slow to start until I realized one extension alone was adding 2 seconds to the startup. Removed it and it was almost instant start.