Tuesday, May 8 2007
According to many industry experts Windows Vista drains notebook battery life faster than Windows XP. The main culprit is said to be the new Aero Glass feature which may look nice but is a burden for many users on the go. While the Aero interface is disabled when switched to power-saving mode, many manufacturers like Hewlett Packard are seeking their own solution to this problem. Experts say that Microsoft will likely have to improve Vista battery life performance in the upcoming service packs to meet consumer pressure.

Source: ZDNet
posted by Easy Rhino - 11:06 AM |  Related News

User comments
by WarEagleAU (May 8th - 1:32 PM) - Reply
probably because aero uses the graphics system heavily?
by GJSNeptune (May 8th - 1:37 PM) - Reply
I'm surprised that people are surprised.
by zekrahminator (May 8th - 1:52 PM) - Reply
Yeah, who would have thought that something that requires more processing power would actually require more battery power :p.
by Easy Rhino (May 8th - 3:01 PM) - Reply
lol i know! i tried to add a bit of sarcasm into it by stating 'according to industry experts' lmao!
by EastCoasthandle (May 8th - 3:08 PM) - Reply
by: GJSNeptune
I'm surprised that people are surprised.


It is truly amazing that people are surprised about any flaw actually being a problem.
But wait for the snappy come back of "they will fix it in a patch/SP" :shadedshu :wtf: :laugh:
by devguy (May 8th - 3:39 PM) - Reply
Yeah, I tried both RC2 and RTM x86 on my laptop. I was able to get about the same battery life running Home Basic and RMClock as XP, but what that implied is that on batteries, I was allowing my max mulitplier to only let the clock speed reach 1GHZ on a 1.7GHZ Pentium M. Needless to say, Vista (even Home Basic) runs pretty terribly at 1GHZ, with 1280MB RAM mind you.

So, to get decent performance on batteries with Vista, you have to let it run the clock speed up (XP x86 runs just fine on my laptop at 800MHZ). Doing that implies a loss in battery life. I suppose that this effect is further shown when you are really using the GPU heavily with Aero.
by jocksteeluk (May 8th - 4:55 PM) - Reply
one positive from Vista (aka millenium no.2) is Hardware developers are being forced to make real performance boosts to keep up with the software, no doubt had vista not been released performance increases would have maintained that 5-10% average increment in performance.
by Mussels (May 9th - 1:39 PM) - Reply
Vistas just not ready for laptops i dont think, they should have released a mobile version of the OS, rather than the bazillion desktop versions.
6944 Users online, 4.81 mbps
Quick Search
Already a member?
Username:
Password:
Register Here!
TechPowerUp on Facebook 
TechPowerUp on Google+ 
New Forum Posts
19:27 by majestic12
Older high end GPU thread *Pics* (141)
19:25 by Wrigleyvillain
Battlefield 3 Clubhouse (11463)
19:24 by DonInKansas
[FS][US] Athlons Fast Sale Thread (27)
19:23 by catnipkiller
Your PC ATM (19548)
19:11 by claylomax
Dear Esther (22)
19:11 by tilldeath
AMD FX OC'ers Club (842)
19:07 by theonedub
TPU's WCG/BOINC Team (14551)
Popular Reviews

Latest VGA Drivers

ATI Catalyst 12.1 WHQL

XP32 | XP64 | W7 32 | W7 64

NVIDIA GeForce 285.58 WHQL

XP32 | XP64 | W7 32 | W7 64