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Vista Eating Battery Life
LWATCDR writes "It looks like more issues with Vista drains notebook batteries. Using the Aero interface really eats into your notebooks battery life. Of course one of the new 'features' of Vista is supposed to be better power management. This provides a great opportunity for a showdown. How long until someone loads Vista on a MacBook and compares run time? It would provide a flat playing field now that Apple makes Intel-powered notebooks."
At least last time I tried to run Vista on my MBP, part of the problem was Apple drivers that weren't optimized for power saving. The processor ran at full speed all the time (where on OS X it used SpeedStep) and the HD would never spin down. Thus I don't know how much of the fault is Microsoft's and how much is Apple's.
With that in mind, I got about 60% the battery life from Vista that I got from OS X.
Still, though, OS X's decent battery life gives the lie to the idea that "it's a processor-intensive process. Duh." If the Aero interface is eating battery, then why isn't Aqua, which is just as full of eye candy?
The one thing I will agree to is that Apple notebooks have some of the best battery lives I've seen.
:)
Everytime I've used an iBook or a Powerbook, I'm amazed at how long the battery lasts. While some other brands (e.g. Dell) have decent battery life compared to others (e.g. HP and Toshiba, at least in my experience), I'm always knocked off by Apple notebooks' battery life.
Now if only Apple notebooks had two mouse buttons instead of hacks around it.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but who cares....
Since it actually puts your video card to good use, Aero makes things faster, not slower. Would you want your fancy game to use some generic CPU instead of all the specalized functionaly provided by your GPU? Why should your OS be any different? Unless your hardware sucked, you would be a fool to turn Aero off--it just makes your CPU do more work!
What this power consumption business really means is hardware manufacturers need to optimize the parts of the GPU that Vista uses so they consume less power. In a year, new "Vista-Ready" laptops will probably use the same, if not significantly less power than their XP optimized counterparts. Less power you say? Hell yeah! Vista has all kinds of goodies for power management that didn't exist in XP; my desktop computer now suspends itself to... something.. after 5 minutes and will instantly wake up. Dunno if XP could that, but it sure as hell didn't on mine. It was default behavior on my Vista install.
Further, Aero is definitly not eye candy and I'd even argue that it is the first version of Windows that *doesn't* have eye candy. The user interface is crisp, snappy, and far more elegant than anything before it. You barely notice the OS is even there; XP & 95 are very "in your face". I personally love Vista - I dare say that when running on proper hardware it really makes you feel the PC has come of age. All prior windows versions feel clunky in comparison.
I'd like to add that everyone who bought XP earlier this year got a "free" upgrade to Vista... I know because I was one of them. However, while I paid the shipping and handling to get it ($10), it's sitting in a drawer unused. I wonder how many of those there were, because I'm sure they were counted, too.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
My friend and I have the same laptop, with the same battery. I have an extra HD for my computer, I'm going to install Vista on mine and boot his and mine both to the desktop, and then unplug them.
Let's see which one dies first.
I will post my findings as a reply to this message...
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Vista (with Aero) battery life, under normal conditions, is about 2/3 of the battery life that I get when running OS X on my Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. I've noticed that Vista does have very good CPU power-savings; it doesn't use full processing power until it is necessary. What I can't figure out is why XP/Vista makes the MacBook Pro run so much hotter. OS X definitely has the higher RAM usage, and CPU usage is nearly the same, yet OS X runs cool and quiet while both Windows installations I've had run warmer. Maybe it's a driver inefficiency or something... it also did this on a Core Duo MacBook I owned. Hmm.
The fine folks at the Tech Report did a report on this months ago and found the difference between Aero and non-Aero was only about a watt. They don't disprove that Vista uses more power than XP, but I'd say they prove Aero isn't the culprit if that's the case. Oh and I at least trust the Tech Report guys - ZD Net hasn't inspired a lot of confidence lately. http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/10945
Then you try to download another browser to get out of this insanity and you're constantly getting the bloody popup to add the site to a trusted list. Which doesn't work because each time you click the link you get another random mirror!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
not to mention it runs fine on a G3 with a 32mb video card. Try running aero on something equivalent to THAT!
I get approximately 30-45 minutes (unscientifically tested) more battery life from OS X.
What boggles my mind the most of all is that Vista has no provision for automatically disabling the Aero interface based on the power source. I'm sure the power disparity would go away if Aero would disable itself as soon as I switched over to battery power. As example: I can hear a fan (presumably GPU) kick into high gear just sitting on the desktop doing nothing. To me that is completely ridiculous and Microsoft should be investigating a way to fix it.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
I'm drawing my conclusions about Vista based on personal experience. I've been running it since the day it was released on MSDN in November '06.
I read these "reviews" online, which are so completely off base and inaccurate, I'm not surprised so many people think Vista is a steaming pile.
But the fact of the matter is that virtually all of the complaints about Vista are easily debunked. Whether it's the DRM FUD, the performance FUD, the "Vista is just a pretty face on XP" FUD, the "UAC is popping up CONSTANTLY" FUD, or any of the other baloney I've read.
Is Vista perfect? Hell no. But the minor issues it has are dwarfed by how much better it is than XP in virtually every way.
What I'd like is a way to do this in power manager.. I really like Aero and the other glitz... but I'd like it turn off at x% remaining battery if it's going to cost me battery time. Personally I'm running it on a brand new laptop so I have no comparison, and I'm far too lazy to make all the adjustments and see if it changes.
I recently purchased a Fujitsu P7230. I couldn't avoid paying the Microsoft tax, even though I was going to run Ubuntu, so I got Vista Home Basic, which was the cheapest option available. I used it for a few weeks before installing Ubuntu, so I could learn about Vista. I might not use Vista full-time, but it would be a good experience. Besides, if I have to pay for it, I'm going to get something out of it.
The P7230 is an ultraportable laptop with incredible battery life. If you fill both battery bays and enable CPU frequency scaling, you can run it for 8 hours without plugging it in. In Vista without Aero (which this machine can't really handle anyway), I would get up to 11 hours of battery life. In Ubuntu I can maybe get 9. I still use Ubuntu full-time, but don't tell me that Vista has worse battery life. Turn off your useless eye-candy if you care about your battery. I'm sure beryl would kill my battery life even worse.
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