Surface Pro 3 short battery life

You got that right.  Google; I swear, must be NSA in commercial form.  Anything you have installed from them is always running in the background "something".  I use Google Earth for some weather information but I think even it has a link with Google even when not running.

It is possible to get more battery time even with the i7 processor, just depends on what you install and run.

Personally, I would stay away from anything Google unless it is on an Android tablet.  Especially the Chrome web browser.

I have been seeing my battery drain overnight lately as well. E.g. I will have 50-60% battery left and I click on Sleep before going to bed myself and by morning the battery is basically dead and I have to plug it back in before it will start up.

I don't buy 5 hours is to be expected. That is NOT what Microsoft is saying. They are saying up to 9 hours for ALL processors. The only disclaimer they have is: Testing consisted of full battery discharge while Internet browsing over WiFi. Internet browsing was tested browsing 25 popular web pages. All settings were default except: Wi Fi was associated with a network, Auto-Brightness disabled, and Bluetooth Radio was turned off. 

Corporate Vice President Panos Panay and members of the Surface team acknowledged that despite the difference in processors, the battery performance will be roughly the same across all the new Surface Pro 3 models.

My usage is similar to their tests with the exception of email, Word and PowerPoint...for that I should not expect to see 55% decrease in battery life. Especially when compared to a similarly equipped MacBook Air.

So, either they are flat out lying or something is terribly wrong with the device or the software...I suspect the software as mentioned above, similar hardware on an MBA is 10+ hours.

You got that right.  Google; I swear, must be NSA in commercial form.  Anything you have installed from them is always running in the background "something".  I use Google Earth for some weather information but I think even it has a link with Google even when not running.

It is possible to get more battery time even with the i7 processor, just depends on what you install and run.

Personally, I would stay away from anything Google unless it is on an Android tablet.  Especially the Chrome web browser.

I used to think that iTunes was bad but after seen Google software hanging Windows I have changed my mind.

Now, on mine, I did recently install iTunes!  I may have to do another battery duration test after doing that.

You are right, Apple did have a few utilities that resides in the system.  Those still exist I do believe.

I will do another test tomorrow.  I have been using a stop watch to clock the actual battery life on the machine and not rely on diagnostics or the built in power cfg utility.  I wanted to see the machine actually do the amount of time specified.

I will do another test tomorrow.  I have been using a stop watch to clock the actual battery life on the machine and not rely on diagnostics or the built in power cfg utility.  I wanted to see the machine actually do the amount of time specified.

Please, report back.