HP Stream Windows tablet battery life solved

The HP Stream 7 Windows Tablet is a nice small device with useful features. I got it specifically to control my laser cutter, got tired of using my laptop and didn't want to spend too much money, so I got a Windows Tablet second hand. 

I got the device fully charged, nice and really... really cheap, I guess the seller was aware of the battery issue but didn't say anything. I quickly found out the tablet discharges rapidly, even in suspension mode. Let's be clear: if your HP Stream Tablet battery life sucks might be due to diff causes, like being very old and having a batter that needs replacement, or you are suffering the common issue of this model not holding the charge. The second option was exactly my case.

Symptoms: I would charge the device up to 100% around 10pm, and found out early in the morning it was absolutely discharged, couldn't boot. Tried charging over and over, and actually watched the battery icon go down really fast, sometimes the device would get really warm.

Strangely enough (a bug), keeping the volume down to 0 increases the battery life, yes I know how that sound. Setting the tablet to mute also does the trick, but in my case this only helped a little bit, not enough.

Turns out RealTek Audio consumes a lot of energy, so go to Task Manager / Startup and disable the RealTek Audio Manager. While you are there, also disable Intel DPTF LPM Service help. Don't worry your device won't miss it. Do this only on startup apps, don't disable the RealTek Driver on devices because you will disable the sound system.

Now go to Services, disable anything related to Remote Desktop, Indexing (search), Telephony, any app updater you might have (Office, Chrome, Firefox), Fax, APPReadiness, Remote Registry, Remote Access, and specially WINDOWS UPDATE. Now Turn off until full charge, restart the device and check your new battery life. I also disabled Home Group services and a few other unneeded things.

Remember, the services can be started and stopped, you have to stop them AND disable them to avoid the system from running them again.

My device wouldn't last the full day on suspension, even half day using it. Leaving it fully charged would appear fully discharged the next morning (in suspension, Wifi OFF). Now? I leave it fully charged at night and only looses 1% o 2%  charge for the next morning. Using it normally keeps the charge as it should.

Charging issues: mine has some usb port issues, so I have to really focus on setting the charger, otherwise it would be plugged in but not actually connected. Besides even connected I have issues but just getting it to charge, this means the device often gets connected but doesn't get charge, this is a different issue and can be related to bad quality USB charge cable, try to get a thick-short one. 

Remember, despite this fix and being absolutely happy with the battery life, the device has a 3000mAh battery, almost double as my smaartphone, so having a bigger screen: expect the average life as a common smartphone. Why? 3000mAh is not much. the Ipad Mini comes with a 4,490mAh battery and has a better design. How? well if you check the Stream Power options you can create diff plans but you can't set diff processor speeds, perhaps the OS will do it for you but it seems there is no Dynamic frequency scaling. Anyway I'm absolutely happy with this great deal, I got it for really cheap, really... cheap. And it works well.