Windows Drains MacBook's Battery; Who's To Blame?

ericatcw writes "Users hoping that Windows 7's arrival will mean less power drain on their MacBook laptops may be disappointed, writes Computerworld's Eric Lai. Running Windows 7 in Boot Camp caused one CNET reviewer's battery life to fall by more than two-thirds. But virtualization software such as VMware Fusion suffer from the same complaints. Some blame Apple's Boot Camp drivers (the last ones were released in April 2008); others lay the blame at Windows' bloated codebase. With Apple and Microsoft both trying to avoid responsibility for improving the experience, Windows 7's reported improvements in power management will be moot for MacBook users for a while."

Comments

Now this is special.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a whole new and special kind of whining.
/. has reached a new level.

Waaaaahhhh!!!

Re:Now this is special.

[wampus]

Offtopic my fat ass. On a side note, when did Slashdot turn into all Microsoft all the time?

Re:Now this is special.

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic my fat ass. On a side note, when did Slashdot turn into all Microsoft all the time?

My pet theory is that the prospects of an actual sane and well received OS release from Microsoft with Win7 is something we have trouble relating to and handling, Vista has made us lazy ;), creating a panick in coming up with ever more esoteric MS-bashing stories. Just look at this one, and how it is written, calling it "troll" and FUD are major understatements, if this is all we have to come up with Microsoft have us on the defensive..

Re:Now this is special.

[gig]

> My pet theory is that the prospects of an actual sane and well received OS
> release from Microsoft with Win7

Windows 7 is neither sane, nor well-received. There was some pretty good hype for a while, but that bubble burst when it came out that there is no upgrade in-place from XP, which cannot be described as anything other than insane, when 80% of the Windows user base is running XP. Please identify for me even one feature of Windows 7 (6.1) that is so dramatically different from Vista (6.0) that it will cause adoption of Windows 7 to be different from Vista. People are buying XP machines right this minute, in spite of Vista being 2 years old and Windows 7 being on the horizon. There is no upgrade for those machines, they have to be wiped. You have to kill off your old system just to consider upgrading to Windows 7.

Microsoft even explained that "pent-up demand" will cause Windows 7 to be a hit and have huge adoption. That is the exact same thing they said about Vista. Pent-up demand, if it even exists at all for Windows, is what causes excitement on launch day. It does not sell all-new operating systems or cause people to bite off a day of I-T work to destroy an XP computer and hopefully come out the other end with a Windows 7 system that is better.

If XP Mode was seamless (it has many seams), and if it were in all Windows 7 (instead of just Ultimate), and if the Windows 7 installer could lift up your current XP and run it in XP Mode after the install is complete, then maybe you would have something here in Windows 7. If people could run the Windows 7 installer in XP and afterwards essentially have both XP and Windows 7, that would be a way forward for Windows. As it is, Windows 7 is just an upgrade for Vista. It will kill off Vista but not XP.

What Microsoft is doing is very much like what Apple tried in 1997. They announced that Mac OS would soon be retired, and that Mac OS X would take its place. But the Mac OS X they were talking about did not have classic Mac compatibility and the user base and developers took a fit. Had Apple released that Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 would have competed with it endlessly, the same way Vista competed with XP (and lost), and the same way Windows 7 will compete with XP and lose. Instead, Apple created a different Mac OS X that could run Mac OS 9 simultaneously, enabling the entire platform to treat Mac OS X as if it were Mac OS 9 (you could sell one Mac OS 9 app to both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X users) and that acted as a bridge from old to new. Microsoft may be ready to do this for XP in a couple of years (2011) going by the current state of XP Mode, and XP will be 10 years old by then and still the majority of Windows installations.

Windows 7 is going nowhere. It's surprising you are buying into the idea that this Windows is finally the one people were asking for. They've never, ever come close to building that. Windows 7 is certainly not it. The primary feature people want is XP -upgradability and -compatibility, and it is not in there.

Don't use bootcamp, but I use Fusion

[Em Emalb]

I have a new MBP and use Fusion. I have an XP image and a Vista image loaded up. I have not noticed any unusual power drain, but that's kind of to be expected, IMO. Also, I have to question the wisdom of using a VM session for more than an hour or so on just the battery.

I can see some instances where this would be an issue for some, but this seems like senseless "hating" to me. No, I'm not trying to troll or anything else, I'm just having a hard time figuring out why someone would spend a long-ish amount of time in Fusion running a guest OS on battery power. It seems obvious to me that there are issues running a non-native OS on a laptop designed for a specific OS...

Re:Don't use bootcamp, but I use Fusion

[gad_zuki!]

Its typical slashdot two minutes of hate. I remember this issue being big news here and no where else with XP on boot camp. Apple updated some driver in boot camp the the issue went away. Considering 7 isnt even officially out yet, perhaps the haters should wait for some updates.

Re:Don't use bootcamp, but I use Fusion

[Rynor]

Except that Microsoft is not a PC vendor, and since you're running Windows on a Macbook you already have bought a license from then so why should they want to sabotage their own business ?

Doubt it's the "bloated codebase"

[Sockatume]

Macbooks are essentially the same hardware as Windows machines, down to battery capacity. It is unlikely that a "bloated codebase" would chew through the battery like nobody's business on one x86 machine and suddenly become perfectly benign on a practically identical x86 machine. Bloat doesn't magically appear when you put an Apple logo on something.

Re:Doubt it's the "bloated codebase"

[jellomizer]

A computer is more then just the CPU. The case of how does Windows 7 handle the hardware or the Drivers handle the hardware or a combination of both. Can really effect a system. Apple Hardware isn't more expensive then normal PC's because Apple is making so much more per copy. It is more expensive because there is a lot of little things built in that add up. Go to Dell or Lenovo and try to build yourself a Laptop that matches all of Apples features. When I say All I mean ALL, no excuses like I don't need that anyways. You will find that the prices are about the same... +/- $100.00 or so. But all those little features OS X knows about and uses properly. Boot Camp Drivers Cover most of them, Windows handles other ones. I know for an instance Windows Vista with boot camp keeps the lights on the keyboard while OS X is a bit smarter then that.

Now comes to the question. Is the Mac made Drivers for Vista keeping those lights on. Or Vista is telling the driver to keep it on. I am betting it is both.

Re:Doubt it's the "bloated codebase"

[Dwedit]

That's a problem in how the NTVDM (Windows NT/2000/XP's DOS subsystem) works. It always gives 100% CPU usage to the program, regardless of what it actually needs. Qbasic runs smooth and snappy on a 286, it just might not be using HALT instructions to indicate that it's done with what it's doing.

Re:Doubt it's the "bloated codebase"

[ByOhTek]

Bloat doesn't magically appear when you put an Apple logo on something.

Have you ever used Apple produced software (iTunes, Quicktime, etc.) on Windows? Or noticed their memory requirements on their own OS?

Not that MS is necessarily any better, but, yeah, Apple is one of the Triumvirate of Bloat for consumer software, in my not-so-humble opinion. The sit in their little triangular table with MS and Adobe.

Re:Doubt it's the "bloated codebase"

[bickerdyke]

Clearly, Honda is the Toyota of automobiles. There's nothing wrong with them and a lot right with them. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if they weren't a foreign maker.

You enjoy living up to your name, aren't you?

What's next? Pepsi is the Coca Cola of softdrinks?

+1 Funny

Re:Doubt it's the "bloated codebase"

[JustASlashDotGuy]

Yes and No. Acura and Honda are made by the same company, but are not the same exact car. Acura is the upper end line, while Honda is not. If you drive a TL and then drive an Accord, there is no way you will confuse the handling, finish, or features of the too. The closest you will come is if you compare the low end Acuras (IE: TSX to the Honda line). Honda makes Acura, Toyota makes Lexus, Nissan makes Infinity, etc. It's nothing new.

I myself drive a Acura TL and refer to it as a Honda all the time. If there was a comparable car in the Honda line when I got this car, I would have gladly purchased it.

As for thinking people just Apples because they want to brag, I don't understand that logic. Apples use a completely different OS and way of doing things; there's now cheaper priced Mac OS they can get. In some cases, Apples are better suited for a given task than MS is. Saying Apple users pay more so they can brag to Windows users, is like saying Windows user pay more so they can brag to Linux users. Each OS has their niche. Personally, I wouldn't say any single OS is better than another in every way. To each their own.

Re:Doubt it's the "bloated codebase"

[Colonel Korn]

Macbooks are essentially the same hardware as Windows machines, down to battery capacity. It is unlikely that a "bloated codebase" would chew through the battery like nobody's business on one x86 machine and suddenly become perfectly benign on a practically identical x86 machine. Bloat doesn't magically appear when you put an Apple logo on something.

It's (probably) not perfectly benign on an identical x86 machine. Anandtech broke this story in October 2008 (http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3435&p=13), so Slashdot is picking things like this up about as quickly as usual. Have you ever wondered why Macbooks often have 50-100% more battery life than a similar non-Mac with very similar specs, including a battery of the same capacity? It's the OS. This is the one area where OSX is the unequivocal champion. Somehow its power savings are vastly better than those in Windows.

Anand has also made some mistakes, I think, like talking about the 6 hour battery life on new Macbooks and claiming that there are no PCs that can match that time, which is absolutely false. What he needs to do to finish investigating this power difference is install OSX on, say, a Lenovo laptop and see whether battery life improves dramatically. Of course, I think that he won't publish about something that breaks a license agreement, so we'll have to wait for another site with fewer legal worries does it.

Boot Camp != Virtualization

[guruevi]

Boot Camp just resizes the hard drive so it can accomodate a Windows install and then you are able to dual-boot your system. It's also possible to install Linux on the other side for example. So it seems like Windows has an issue with the Intel or NVidia chipset, the processor or just plainly consumes more resources than Mac OS.

A good comparison would be to install Linux on the other side and see what it's battery life is then. Mac OS X offloads a lot (all) of the desktop rendering to the GPU while the Windows XP desktop doesn't and although Vista's top-end version does, it is offset by the amount of graphics that need to be rendered and the low-end version still doesn't.

There is a reason that the battery dies quicker and since there is no layer of Mac OS X between Windows and the hardware I doubt it's because Apple did something wrong. It's either Windows or the Intel or NVidia drivers. You can't really compare VMWare or Parallels performance because it's running Windows on top of Mac OS X, it is of course going to consume more resources.

Apple tactics

[abigsmurf]

1: have your OSX drivers switch between on board and dedicated GPU as needed.
2: Make the drivers for every other OS use the dedicated GPU constantly even if there's no real need.
3: Claim the sucky battery life is MS' fault and that their OS is poorly programmed

It's Apple's job to find out.

[mxh83]

Apple and it's customers are the only losers if something doesn't work on the Macbook. Microsoft never claimed it would. This situation is very similar to the Palm Pre / Itunes fiasco. If you're a Palm Pre owner, just STFU if Itunes doesn't behave the way it should.

Re:It's Apple's job to find out.

[mdwh2]

Except it was Apple who changed Itunes to lock out the Palm Pre, so for your analogy to work, I'd say it's still Apple that the issue is with, not Palm.

(I mean, by default it's obviously Apple's job with this battery issue - but if hypothetically it turned out that MS had intentionally modified Windows to drain the battery on Macs, there'd be an uproar about their action!)

Not specifically MacBook/Windows/BootCamp problem

[amn108]

The problem is not specific to Windows or MacBooks. Many developers code as if the only machines that will run their software are permanently el-grid-connected servers or workstations. Polling loops with insane timers (like 1000hz), and they also take the advice "don't optimize prematurely" to mean "don't optimize unless you are payed for it". Re-drawing the display even if it is not needed at all, copying data structures all over, etc. No wonder batteries drain.

In this case I believe all three are to blame - neither alone is the culprit - I mean Windows usually is compatible with real hardware enough to last couple-three hours on an average laptop battery doing average desktop stuff, MacBook is about the same. Probably BootCamp taking battery awareness too lightheartedly and/or unable to optimize for specific cases like virtualized Windows code running.