Maybe a fix for battery drain on Iconia A1-840 (NOT 830)

SeattleMike

Hey all-

 

Just a little correction for those who have may read the first version of this, I have an A1-840, not A1-830:

 

 

Have had an Iconia A1-840 for nearly a year (Costco special purchase, like sub$100) so haven't had huge expectations of it.  Generally I have found it to be good with some quirks (Sometimes garbled headphone sound, occational flickering of the display, etc) but have found it useful as a utility tablet, especially for travelling.

 

The only other problem I seem to have was a chronic deep sleep that I've read about on here.  Most times I would have to do a hard restart (holding the power button for 30+ seconds, letting it go and then it would restar).  I even talked with Acer and they assured me there would be an update to take care of it.

 

Lately I was finding it was was burning through the battery, and I did a check about what was using so much of the battery.  The installed McAfee app was by far at the the top of the list.  I first disabled it's constant monitoring (which puts a little McAfee icon on the right of the screen) and set it to scan once a day. 

 

I also looked at other free antivirus apps and decided to try CM security.  I loaded it and was trying to uninstall the McAfee (which apparently cannot be done), so had to settle with disabiling it.  The CM thing seemed to clean some stuff up and made the machine run smoother.

 

The battery use is now greatly improved.  I just went 3 days with moderate usage and sleeping (fully charged down to 19%) but also I haven't had any further deep sleep issues (hmmm, McAfee???).

 

Anyway I'm cautiously optimistic, just thought I'd pass this along, also if anyone knows how to totally remove McAfee would be appreciative for that information.

 

Cheers-

 

Seattle Mike