M14x-R2, Bitlocker killed my battery!

Just a quick post. Tech support were as always completely useless so I thought i'd add my own experiences here when trying to enable Bitlocker on my M14xR2.

I'm running windows 8.1 with 1tb SSD and a 512GB miniPCI SSD and wanted to enable bitlocker so I can use my laptop for work (work requires encryption). After finding out that the Alienware kit doesn't have a TPM, I enabled a slight registry tweak and set about using my iPhone as the key to unlock the laptop. All went well, I had copies of my key stored in case I lost my iPhone and my laptop was working great,  I noticed very little overhead on processing time, boot time was maybe half a second slower but nothing major and  I was now able to use my personal laptop for work.

After running for a few weeks without any problems, I unplugged my laptop to attend a meeting one day, the meeting lasted roughly an hour, but I knew I wouldn't need my power adapter as the laptop has always maintained around 5-6 hours without needing power when doing light tasks. The meeting lasted around 50 minutes, and i'd gone from 100% battery to less than 5% in that time. Something was wrong I thought. I disabled all non essential services, checked on the patches i'd installed lately and ran the alienware checkup utility to find out what was going on. The alienware checkup utility came up saying my battery capacity was down to 75% (on a machine that's barely 6 months old)  so I called the support line to explain the issue. The support rep was extremely unhelpful, explaining that "modern processors will kill the battery and that as a consumable I shouldn't expect the battery to last any longer than 8-10 months anyway". He then went on to tell me that  "No Alienware system battery will ever be replaced". Its not my first run in with support staff, so I lectured him on the reduced power consumption in the latest processors, that the Nvidia card was disabled until needed (And since my shutdown issue, only ever on mains power) and that this should still function as a laptop. I also pointed out the sale of goods act saying the battery needs to last at least a year before being considered consumable, but he refused to listen.

Looks like my www.falienware.com website will be back up and running again at some point in the future. 

Anyway, aside from that back to my point. As I'd been running the laptop on mains for a few weeks after enabling bitlocker I hadn't put 2 and 2 together and realised that this was indeed the culprit.  I went through a series of restores, uninstalls and re-installs to try and find the battery drainer until I eventually turned off bitlocker. The battery life of the laptop immediately quadrupled. Running bitlocker for a couple of weeks does seem to have degraded my battery considerably, with the expected charge dropping from 98% to 75% in just a few weeks, so I thought i'd let everyone know the affect it has (seeing as Alienware support  believe that they should not replace any batteries). 

One final note, for anyone taking out the extended warranty, I'd read those terms and conditions very carefully.  The support agent I spoke to told me that most things aren't actually covered.