Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Batteries

VindictivePantz sends word that the Windows 7 team has posted a new blog entry discussing their conclusions about the reported Windows 7 battery failures. "To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement. ...every single indication we have regarding the reports we've seen are simply Windows 7 reporting the state of the battery using this new feature and we're simply seeing batteries that are not performing above the designated threshold. ... We are as certain as we can be that we have addressed the root cause and concerns of this report, but we will continue to monitor the situation."

Comments

Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is not at fault. Hardware or 3rd party software always is

Re:Surprise

[socceroos]

...news at 11.

Re:Surprise

[Hijacked Public]

Wow, you don't expect to find people with Premier Ultimate support contacts on an FOSS geared site.

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if you are joking or not. I mean if a hard drive sector gets corrupt where a set of critical files are and on boot it can't recover them or load them from cache because that is corrupt as well, is that Microsoft's fault if the OS starts crashing? If memory is failing causing a BSOD is that Microsoft's fault? If the video card's VRAM is faulty and is causing the system to crash is that MS's fault?
The laptop flies off the top of someone's car roof after they left it there before driving off....yep Its MS's fault once again.
Seriously. There is a crap load MS can be blamed for over the years. But hardware? cut them a bit of slack on a few things.

Re:Surprise

[lgw]

Windows is not at fault. Hardware or 3rd party software always is

I have a lot of sympathy for the Windows team on this one - I don't think they're blame-shifting here.

It's been my experience that the software that reports a problem will get blamed for causing the problem. Maybe "shoot the messenger" is just human nature, but I've often been amazed at how users will blame software that repors a hardware problem that the software couldn't not possibly have caused. "Disk I/O error detected" results in calls of "why are you causing my disks to fail" - after all it must be you, since the other software isn't complaining (failing, mind you, but not complaining).

And now apparantly "battery failure detected" results in calls of "why are you causing my battery to fail" - after all it must be you, since the prvious version didn't complain.
 

Re:Surprise

[Deathlizard]

It's not far from the truth.

Lenovo has had bad batches of batteries in both their R60 and R61 line that were not subject to the explosion recalls. The R60's would go bad spontaneously and without warning, and the battery indicator would blink orange fast as well as Lenovo's battery manager would report a battery malfunction until you did a warranty replacement. Since they only warranty batteries for only 1 year, we had to buy tons more until we got rid of them at end of lease, then the first sets of R61's started showing the same signs. The R400's have been ok so far, but they have other issues (usually involving a motherboard replacement) These machines had XP and was way before windows 7 came out.

So far with windows 7, the only time I've seen the warning is when Lenovo's power manager confirms the issue. The only thing I wish Windows 7 had built in is a battery reset option like the Lenovo Power manager. After that is run, you can sometimes gain a few more minutes out of your battery, but not all the time and never if the battery reports a failure rather than a loss in battery performance.

Re:Surprise

[mdm-adph]

Ah, I hate sticking up for MS, but it's true. Ubuntu 9.04 introduced this feature, too, I think -- I remember seeing a box pop up for it after installing on my 7-year-old laptop and going "wait a sec..." ...and then realizing that, as far as the software was concerned, my 7-year-old battery with its 5-min lifespan probably has "failed" as a battery. :P

Re:Surprise

[Brian Gordon]

...which will source the frenzied blogosphere shrieking conspiracy and propagating each others' blind speculation. And of course nobody will pay attention to the only source that can possibly know what they're talking about: the engineers that designed the system..

Re:Surprise

[Kadaki]

Yes, most of them probably just didn't notice the reduced battery life until this warning brought it to their attention. When I upgraded my notebook's Windows partition to Windows 7 I started getting this message, but I started seeing the warning over a year before, whenever I booted Ubuntu.

Re:Surprise

[Chris_Mir]

Pretty similar to multi-tier software development, where business logic is developed separately from the user interface. I'm doing the latter and guess who gets all the bug reports?

Re:Surprise

[omnichad]

That reminds me. Does Windows 7 finally report on hard drive SMART status? Glaring missing feature from XP.

Re:Surprise

[westlake]

Windows is not at fault. Hardware or 3rd party software always is

That's generally a fair assumption with any OS.

Win 7 has about eight to ten percent of the global market. OS Platform Statistics

That translates into a hell of a lot of laptops and a good many batteries that were well past there past their prime before Win 7 was installed. But there have been only a few hundred complaints.

Re:Surprise

[NightHawkeye]

Malware, maybe...

A Windows 7 botnet machine can probably use up the battery very quickly.

Re:Surprise

[gd2shoe]

And of course nobody will pay attention to the only source that can possibly know what they're talking about: the engineers that designed the system..

That was sarcasm, no?

(Nothing about this particular problem, but we've seen denials before...)

Re:Surprise

[Blakey Rat]

XP reported SMART status. It was in the Disk Management administrative tool. (Same place it is in Vista and Windows 7, actually.) Pretty sure Windows 2000 had it also.

To answer your question: Yes, Windows 7 reports SMART status.

Re:Surprise

[omnichad]

No, not in a tool. I mean - pop-up warning "Hey, your hard drive is failing" without your intervention. Like the battery warning.

Re:Surprise

[NicknamesAreStupid]

The price of success. My operating system has never been criticized, but of course no one has ever seen it. BTW, it doesn't do much either.

Re:Surprise

[socceroos]

I think Brian is trying to say that he designed the system and is a bit upset that we're bagging it out without asking him for an explanation first.

Re:Surprise

[Cougar Town]

Sounds just like what I hear about Linux. Oh it's not Linux's fault, it's nvidia's binary driver, or Logitech's crappy unsupported webcam, or some up-stream package the distribution uses but doesn't maintain (but includes in their default install... Ubuntu and PulseAudio, anyone?), etc...

My purpose here is not to troll, but to point out that this can, and does, happen with any OS that is aimed at a very very wide range of hardware and supports all manner of 3rd party software. This includes some things like drivers that plug directly into the OS itself at a low level, and only in an ideal world does everything play 100% nice with each other. Sometimes (some would even say "often"), Microsoft is to blame (or *insert favourite Linux distrib or OS here*), but definitely not all the time.

These are simply the facts of computing as they are today. As much as I wish things were different, they're not.

Re:Surprise

[ultranova]

If the video card's VRAM is faulty and is causing the system to crash is that MS's fault?

How could that possibly cause a system crash instead of just corrupted graphics? Does Windows kernel use compute shaders?

And, frankly, after the fight against Windows 7 to get my CRT display working on the modes I want, with the refresh rate I want, I admit that "Microsoft's fault" is the first thought that comes to my mind whenever there's a problem with any PC with any Microsoft software in it.

Re:Surprise

[BitwiseX]

Yes, it rarely happens but I'm on Microsoft's side. "Shooting the messenger" is the best way to put this. The same beef would have existed with XP or Vista had it been implemented then. All the battery data is READ-ONLY. Period. The tin foil hats can come off now. It is not a conspiracy to between Microsoft and battery manufacturers.

All that being said: It IS a little confusing to an average user to see a 100% battery charge AND say your battery needs replacing. 100% means the same thing to everybody. "Perfect".

Microsoft has thrown everyone for a loop and released a fairly solid OS (IMHO). I just hope we aren't trying to hard to find a fault..... you know... because it's Microsoft..

Re:Surprise

[Idbar]

Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Batteries
My guess is that batteries are killing themselves as soon as they know they are powering a Windows machine. They have become quite intelligent now.

Kidding, kidding!

Re:Surprise

[UU7]

Same thing happened to me 60 cycles and a healthy battery died after upgrading. The replacement from the manufacturer died as well, went from new to 0 battery charge capacity with 0 charge remaining within 2 weeks *sign*.. I've given up and just started using ubuntu on the second replacement and it's been working fine.

Re:Surprise

[Conchobair]

I have to agree after 3 years working ISP tech support and hearing numerous customers blaming the ISP for giving them viruses.

Re:Surprise

[harlows_monkeys]

It's been my experience that the software that reports a problem will get blamed for causing the problem

I've seen that quite a bit. I work at a small anti-virus/anti-spyware company.

If our software finds a problem that McAfee or Symantec misses, out come the accusations that we have a deliberate false positive to scare the user into buying the product, or even worse, the accusations that we actually put the virus on the system.

On the other hand, if we fail to find a problem that McAfee or Symantec reports (even if it is a false positive), out come the accusations that our product does a poor job of detecting problems!

Re:Surprise

[DaHat]

I don't know if it's done with SMART... but a month or two ago I had my Media Center PC in the livingroom give me a couple of warnings (via a dialog box) about the impending death of it's HD.

Not having much time (but having spare parts) I put in a fresh drive and put the suspect one on the shelf to look at later.

Re:Surprise

[joeyblades]

The operating system performance does have some impact on battery performance and battery life. There are circumstances where the same core running the same speed on the same hardware will consume more power on a Windows OS than another OS...

So, to be clear. I'm not blaming Microsoft, but I'm not ready to let them off the hook.

And... even if their claims that the OS is just reporting the actual state of the battery, that doesn't mean that Microsoft's OS (current or previous) didn't preciptate the situation.

Re:Surprise

[murdocj]

One of the comments in the blog is that the PC vendors they've been in contact with are NOT seeing increased levels of reports of battery failures. If Win 7 was killing batteries the vendors would have seen an uptick. The MS blog has a pretty clear and convincing explanation as to what they looked at, what the evidence is, and why this is just a case of MS getting crap for doing a better job than they used. Which is certainly the classic "no-win" situation.

Re:Surprise

[Blakey Rat]

Just as an FYI, I don't read minds so you have to actually type what you mean.

Re:Surprise

[omnichad]

Just an FYI, I don't cater to you, so you have to keep track of the topic of conversation.

Re:Surprise

[springbox]

Yes, it does. Someone I know got such a warning with one of their old hard disks.

Re:Surprise

[lukas84]

Yes, since Vista there's an annoying popup.

I've seen it only once, though. The disk is still working. :)

Re:Surprise

[ozmanjusri]

the engineers that designed the system. Are they the same engineers that designed Vista?

That's the OS which shipped with the "Microsoft ACPI Compliant Control Method Battery" device that frequently refused to charge batteries even when plugged in, in case you're wondering.

I wouldn't let Microsoft off the hook just yet. Lithium ion batteries need to be slow charged the last 10-15% of their charge cycle or they will be damaged. There are already known unfixed issues with the Vista/7 battery controller, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear some lithium ion batteries are failing through mismanaged charge cycles.

Re:Surprise

[UU7]

No sorry, battery data is not read only ... Have anywhere that says that laptop batteries are read only ?

http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/bq20z90-v110.html

Re:Surprise

[Blakey Rat]

Dude.

You said XP was missing a feature to report on hard drive SMART status. Here's a quote:

That reminds me. Does Windows 7 finally report on hard drive SMART status? Glaring missing feature from XP.

XP has that feature. So you simultaneously make yourself look like an idiot by claiming XP doesn't have a feature it actually does have, but you also waste my time trying to correct your retarded wrongness.

I apologize that you didn't say what you fucking mean, but I'm not going to apologize for replying to the post you *typed* and not the post you *meant*. I don't have the psychic abilities to know what you meant.

What any of this has to do with me not keeping track of the topic of conversation is a mystery. But since we've already established that you don't say what you fucking mean, I'm just going to assume you actually meant "wow, Blakey Rat is an awesome guy" and move on with my life.

Re:Surprise

[b4k3d b34nz]

There was no topic of conversation for him to respond to at the time, other than your vague question.

Re:Surprise

[BikeHelmet]

My mother had an Acer laptop with XP. Battery life was about 2 hours. Several months later it started dropping. Within another couple months, it was 3 minutes. Now it's approximately 90 seconds.

I'm inclined to agree with you.

Re:Surprise

[brufleth]

I work on the controls for complicated systems. Our part of the system is like a little computer. It can record and report problems with the overall system. We ALWAYS get blamed when there is a problem because we're the ones who report it. It makes us into little engine debuggers because we're always considered at fault for a failure until we prove otherwise.

Re:Surprise

[omnichad]

The topic of converstation are notifications that pop up in the notification area. JUST LIKE THE BATTERY NOTIFICATION.
 
Now if the battery notice only came up when going to Battery Management in the control panel, then I'd have some sympathy. You just weren't paying attention.

Re:Surprise

[Austerity Empowers]

Microsoft has also been known to blame hardware for failing to comply to often unwritten, industry spec deviating, irrational requirements in order to function properly. If the hardware does not magically conform to their software's expectations in this regard, it is therefore to blame. I've played this game with them several times, at this point anything they say sounds like total bullshit, even if this once, it's possible they're correct.

Re:Surprise

[jlintern]

I wouldn't let Microsoft off the hook just yet. Lithium ion batteries need to be slow charged the last 10-15% of their charge cycle or they will be damaged. There are already known unfixed issues with the Vista/7 battery controller, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear some lithium ion batteries are failing through mismanaged charge cycles.

If the operating system (or any software) were in charge of regulating the battery charge cycle, how would the battery charge safely while the system was powered off? There should be hardware in the charge circuit to prevent this kind of damage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_controller

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not in a tool. I mean - pop-up warning "Hey, your hard drive is failing" without your intervention. Like the battery warning.

Having worked in the industry for over 20 years I can tell you that predicting hard drive failure using mechanisms such as SMART is a fool's errand. As we used to joke, SMART predicts 8 out of every 3 pending failures. Lots of false positives, which generate support calls, unnecessary drive swapping and lost productivity. That's the main reason you don't see PC manufacturers promoting the capability.

Re:Surprise

[ozmanjusri]

how would the battery charge safely while the system was powered off?

Look for yourself;

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa939594(WinEmbedded.5).aspx

Both are used. I suspect the Microsoft controller is managing both battery charge and drain from the computer being in use.

Re:Surprise

[geekoid]

There are good ways to handle hardware failures, and bad ways.

irql_not_less_or_equal

is a BAD way of handling errors.

Re:Surprise

[pjameson]

It definitely has it, because when I was messing with Vista, it kept telling me that it was failing and I needed to backup immediately even though I only had 2 errors on the drive.

Re:Surprise

[geekoid]

" I don't think they're blame-shifting here."
maybe, maybe not. There history means I can't trust them when they say it's not their fault.

Re:Surprise

[omnichad]

Yeah, had I bothered with Vista, that would have been a nice surprise. Linux's smartd is set up on my server to send me an email when the hard drive is outside normal parameters.

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

err... the hardware is completely in control of the charging cycle... so, what is this magical "battery controller" of which you speak?

Re:Surprise

[AK Marc]

Does Windows 7 finally report on hard drive SMART status?

No, it doesn't report SMART status messages to the user, but it does keep logs that may be manually looked up.

See how easy that was?

I apologize that you didn't say what you fucking mean,

He said what he meant. What he meant what he said. And when he corrected you that your interpretation of his statement, which wasn't unambiguous, so misunderstanding wasn't difficult, you turned into an ass. What are you doing now, arguing that he doesn't know what he meant? Or are you arguing that a log file that has to be manually opened is "reporting on" a status? For Windows, reporting on something means 4,000 popups with "click ok to continue" on them. It's understandable that there are misunderstandings, with no inflection, regional word choice, the large number of people who don't speak English as their first language, but to be an as about it when someone corrects you doesn't mean you are right and he is wrong or whatever you are arguing about. After his clarification, it is obvious what he was asking, and that your answer is the opposite of the correct answer to the question he was asking.

Re:Surprise

[LordKronos]

How could that possibly cause a system crash instead of just corrupted graphics?

There are chips on the card that handle its end of the bus communication, so if the ram is faulty it corrupts the chip's data. Then you could get anything from invalid data being sent back over the bus (which the driver may not be designed to handle, because it should NEVER happen) to errant signals being sent in a way that don't conform to the bus communication protocol.

Re:Surprise

[GaratNW]

"device that frequently refused to charge batteries even when plugged in, in case you're wondering."

Source? I'm not denying it could be true, but would love to see a source. I've seen lots of claims that company did X or Y, but rarely see any citation, and just something about the wording yells unsubstantiated anecdote, rather than fact. No offense intended, just curious. I've not seen any reports about this problem that are definitely traced to MS's implementation of ACPI. A Google search shows a number of forum posts, as well as a few about the requirement that the laptop support the 2.0 spec for Vista, but nothing from any major cites that usually document this sort of problem.

Re:Surprise

[gd2shoe]

I think Brian is trying to say that he designed the system and is a bit upset that we're bagging it out without asking him for an explanation first.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bngordon

Brian Gordon
Group Manager at Microsoft
Greater Seattle Area

Ah. I see now. No offense intended. I didn't know that it was personal.

I will certainly give your team (or peers, whatever) the benefit of the doubt on this, but I don't buy for a second that they're the only ones who can know what their talking about. They may be the only ones who do know what they're talking about, though. (important difference)

Re:Surprise

[Octorian]

Don't get me started... On a past project at work, I was responsible for software that merely acted as a bit of UI control glue between a display app and a whole bunch of back-end code sourcing the data.

Whenever the display app failed to show the correct information, guess what all the bug reports got written against :-)

I practically got in fights with our testers all the time over this crap. Eventually I wound up writing and/or showing them various diagnostic tools that could be used to isolate the real problem. Did that help? Not enough, unfortunately.

Re:Surprise

[socceroos]

True, its hard to be sure when you can't see the source.

On that note, Brian, send me a copy of Win7's source code and I'll take a look at it for you - if you want. ;)

Re:Surprise

[PIBM]

If a graphic card can be fried with simple directx calls, they are certainly not well built and as such we can't be blaming microsoft.

Re:Surprise

[Gr8Apes]

XP onward reports SMART status. Do they supply you with a script kiddie friendly tool to retrieve and view that data? Obviously not.

I went and reread the entire set of ancestor posts. Nowhere is a popup stated prior to his response. I too was surprised by his initial statement, as I know that XP reports SMART status, and there's a variety of third party tools to view that information in a more pleasant manner.

Re:Surprise

[AK Marc]

Then I disagree with your definition of "report." It does not tell anyone anywhere of it. XP reports battery life. It has an icon for it in the system tray and multiple pop-ups about battery issues of a variety of types. Things tossed into the event log are "recorded" not "reported." Just because the information exists and can be accessed does not make it a reported item. It's a recorded item.

I've never heard anyone say "XP reports your IP when you connect via DHCP." Saying it that way makes it sound like there's a popup that says "your IP is 192.168.1.100." But the reality is that you have to open up a command prompt and type in ipconfig or go to a network configuration screen to find it. Would you say "XP reports my IP when I connect via DHCP"? That makes it sound like XP shows it to you when it is assigned, rather than just making it available to you if you search for it.

Also, I think you are confusing the verb and the noun. He used it as a verb. It stores a report. I would never say anything against that statement. However to report it isn't to record it. It stores a record, but doesn't relay that record or pass it to anyone or anything. That's where it fails in reporting. SMART reports on its status and sends that report to the OS. The OS receives that report. Saves that report. And will present that report. But never reports that to anyone else. The first definition under the verb report I looked up was "to carry and repeat, as an answer or message; repeat, as what one has heard." XP does not repeat the message. It stores it, and it can be looked up. But it doesn't repeat it as it comes in. It files it away to be looked up (or not) at some future time, and doesn't repeat it when it comes it, and, given the general users, almost never repeats what SMART tells it. That's not reporting it, that's filing it. Or, my favorite in the definitions of the verb: "to make known the presence, condition, or whereabouts of: to report a ship missing." Windows does not make known the condition of SMART. Windows reports the ship missing by going home and waiting for someone to knock on the door and ask. Again, nothing I've ever seen indicates filing away silently as "reporting." That a report (noun) exists stating what was received is irrelevant to whether it was reported (verb).

Re:Surprise

[Gr8Apes]

Then I disagree with your definition of "report." It does not tell anyone anywhere of it. XP reports battery life. It has an icon for it in the system tray and multiple pop-ups about battery issues of a variety of types.

You have a definition problem. XP reports everything. You're describing notifications. That's an entirely different thing.

I've never heard anyone say "XP reports your IP when you connect via DHCP." ...Would you say "XP reports my IP when I connect via DHCP"?

It does - just look in Event Viewer.

XP does not repeat the message. It stores it, and it can be looked up. But it doesn't repeat it as it comes in.

I beg to differ. It's repeated in various places and utilities, and programs. Users just don't happen to be on the active notification list. Otherwise, how does the "report" get into the Event Log? It certainly didn't originate there.

Now, as to notifications, I'm not sure, but I believe you can configure them. My main goal has been to remove as many of those incredibly useless notifications as possible. You see, I run regular reports, which I review and they tell me what I need to know. Since I don't log into all my machines regularly, this is a much more useful tool than a GUI notification on the desktop in the form of a transient popup balloon. (Oh no - I was in a meeting for 5 minutes, now what?)

As a last point: there's an entire industry that charges for this type of notification support, including MS's own internal products. Why would they give this to you for free? On the other hand, you could write a small registered listener that would give you your desired notification popup, should you need it so desperately.

Re:Surprise

[japa]

No, not in a tool. I mean - pop-up warning "Hey, your hard drive is failing" without your intervention. Like the battery warning.

After my first HD failure I installed smarmontools ( http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ ). The next time I got advance warning about the oncoming failure. I had dropped my laptop from about 1 meter and less than week from that incident, I got the popup. About week from that my system would not boot any longer. There are other smart monitoring software also, but this one is open source, thus you are getting good bang for the buck.

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me where in the ACPI spec is there the ability for any operating system to control when a battery is charged or what rate it is charged at. Hint: It's not there. It's all read-only.

http://www.acpi.info/DOWNLOADS/ACPIspec40.pdf

_BMC is the closest, but that's for calibration only and anyway it's the BIOS AML controls what's actually going on.

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

there should be a boolean diagram to go along with that last statement.

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I run a program to generate a graph and some statistics based on an Apache log file, that isn't really a report because I had to run it manually?

Re:Surprise

[TheThiefMaster]

Does Windows 7 finally report on hard drive SMART status?

No, it doesn't report SMART status messages to the user, but it does keep logs that may be manually looked up.
 

Actually, Vista onwards pop up a massive message on the screen crying doom for your pc when it notices a sufficiently bad SMART message.

Including 7.

So yes, it does report them to the user.

Re:Surprise

[TheThiefMaster]

Perhaps one testing team which found the bugs in general, and one more experienced team which just tried to isolate bugs and repro steps and fire bugs off to the right developers would work?

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

My battery was already drained with Vista and 7 told me the message.
BTW, it fried in less than an year, but I'm on an overheating DELL E6400 so anything could be.

Re:Surprise

[Xest]

I will inform you of errors, but it has to be sure they're errors.

For example, popping up a "Your hard drive is failing" message when the drive isn't actually failing, but someone has installed one too many drives for their PSU and as such the PSU is failing to provide enough power is unhelpful. It'll make people buy a replacement HDD, when what they needed was a more powerful PSU for example.

It's really best to leave diagnostics of these sorts of problems to professionals in this case, because they've been doing it long enough to know the symptoms don't necessarily point to the piece of hardware that's actually displaying the issue being at fault.

If Windows failed to write a piece of data for example, it will also provide you an error regarding this in the tray, it will also give errors when you try and read something that cannot be read. What it should not do is assume these are signs of a faulty hard drive though and just tell the user that, as it might be misleading.

Re:Surprise

[ozmanjusri]

Source? I'm not denying it could be true, but would love to see a source.

Again, look for yourself.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Plugged+In%2C+Not+Charging&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a

I've encountered it several times in my role as resident geek and computer fixer. Sometimes the unofficial workaround fixes the problem, sometimes not.

Workaround:

1. Click Start and type device in the search field, then select Device Manager .
2. Expand the Batteries category.
3. Under the Batteries category, right-click the Microsoft ACPI Compliant Control Method Battery listing, and select Uninstall .
WARNING: Do not remove the Microsoft AC Adapter driver or any other ACPI compliant driver.
4. On the Device Manager taskbar, click Scan for hardware changes.

Re:Surprise

[ozmanjusri]

What does the spec have to do with Microsoft's implementation?

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

No spec ever has anything to do with a Microsoft implementation.

Re:Surprise

[halowolf]

I have a 2007 Macbook Pro and Bootcamp(ed) Windows 7 Home Premium onto it with the Vista drivers (which have now been updated to the Windows 7 drivers now that Apple has made them available) and basically my battery got destroyed. It holds a fraction of its charge and Windows 7 is properly reporting that it needs to be replaced. Since I hardly use my notebook in battery mode its not much of a bother to me, but it still irked me a bit. Macbook users beware! At least I can replace my battery without having to send it back to Apple. I have always considered its non replaceable battery hardware it has now as a stupid idea.

Re:Surprise

[godefroi]

So this IC you linked to seems to have writeable "protection" characteristics, and writeable "configuration", and obviously it writes it's logs, but I don't see the "destroy battery" pin there.

Regardless, what makes you think any of that is accessable through ACPI, anyway?

Re:Surprise

[omnichad]

If it were based on something reliable like SMART data, it's better than not warning at all. If you have installed extra internal drives, you may not be a genius, but you're not the average idiot. The vast, vast majority of people use the one hard drive their computer came with.

Re:Surprise

[GargamelSpaceman]

I shut off as much software battery life management crap as I can, and configure it in the BIOS. It may not be as good as software management can be ( at least I've heard ) but it's good enough for me, and works pretty reliably as long as there is not software to screw it up for me. Most of the time, I carry my laptop with me, and use it plugged in at a desk with the power adapter supplying unlimited juice, so I keep the BIOS configured for maximum power use / maximum performance ( kinda like a Hummer ). On those rare occasions when I actually want to use the battery for anything other than being a built in UPS, I might stop to temporarily reconfigure the BIOS. Of the rare times when I want to use my laptop on my lap disconnected from power, 60% of those are for under an hour at a time. So only 40% of almost never do I give a darn about battery life. At other times, my laptop is really a portable desktop computer with built in UPS.

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft saying there was no possibility of Windows 7 causing bad batteries is in no way a surprise.

Neither was it a surprise when I started hearing Toyota commercials telling people their cars are perfectly safe and, even though they took them off the market because of deadly problems, to not worry about recalls about unintentional acceleration problems and brakes failing.

I mean, only the engineers that designed the system could ever know how it might fail (unless their NDA says they can never say it could). And we know only the best most trusted high ranking corporate executives blame the customers (and floor mats - of which the floor mats have 100% proven not to be the cause, as it happens even with them removed from vehicle).

Yeah, I am sure Microsoft Windows 7 isn't causing batteries to fail.*

* - higher CPU usage and higher swap usage is going to wear the batteries faster

Re:Surprise

[eleuthero]

If they were physical errors, it seems to me that you would have an impending problem - physical problems multiply like rabbits (or internet memes). One week you might have 2, the next week 8000... and then the hard drive dies in the middle of your lunch break Slashdot read... not fun.

Re:Surprise

[pjameson]

Yeah, I know this. I work on servers for living, and nothing gets you double checking backups like drive errors showing up. It's had those same couple of errors for a year or two, though, with no new ones, so it's probably alright :)

Re:Surprise

[AK Marc]

If you manually run a report you had to create yourself based on an Apache log file, then you created a report, but Apache didn't report any errors which may be included in that report.

Re:Surprise

[Brian Gordon]

Oh my, that's an unfortunate coincidence. Different Brian Gordon!

Re:Surprise

[gd2shoe]

I don't know whether to congratulate or console you... ;)

Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries?

[maxwell demon]

So what does it tell them? "Hey, you seem to be failing. Do you need me to help you?"

Re:Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries?

[noidentity]

I think it's warning the batteries that they will be warned, kind of like recently with Windows 7 RC. Trust me, you don't want to startle a Li-ion battery.

Re:Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA:

PC batteries expose information about battery capacity and health through the system firmware...The firmware provides information on the battery including manufacturer, serial number, design capacity and last full charge capacity. The last two pieces of information—design capacity and last full charge capacity—are the information Windows 7 uses to determine how much the battery has naturally degraded.

To summarize: Windows is reporting that the actual battery charge is *gasp* less than the manufacturers claim!

This notification is new to Windows 7 and not available in Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Before Windows 7 your battery life slowly died out over a year or so. Now there is a handy system tray icon telling you it's happening!

Re:Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries?

[chickenarise]

Go ahead and mod me offtopic, I don't care. I would like a response though :)

The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

I don't understand your sig, the numbers you can count are real numbers. Real numbers encompass all integers, all fractions, and all irrational numbers.

Re:Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries?

[lgw]

There are a countable infinity of integers. There are an uncountable infinity of reals. It's a math joke.

Re:Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries?

[chickenarise]

Thanks! Now I get it :)

Re:Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries?

[maxwell demon]

You described how Windows warns the user. I asked how Windows warns the battery, as the summary text claims.

Or in short: Whoosh!

almost fooled me...

[Cornwallis]

I got excited for a minute because I thought the header read "Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Babies".

That would have been interesting.

Re:almost fooled me...

[ajrs]

I got excited for a minute because I thought the header read "Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Babies".

That would have been interesting.

So, Windows 7 is still killing babies?

Re:almost fooled me...

[Teese]

I got excited for a minute because I thought the header read "Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Babies".

That would have been interesting.

So, Windows 7 is still killing babies?

They haven't denied it yet.

Re:almost fooled me...

[grcumb]

I got excited for a minute because I thought the header read "Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Babies".

That would have been interesting.

So, Windows 7 is still killing babies?

No, they're using them as batteries, like in the Matrix. RTFS, you ignorant sheeple!

Re:almost fooled me...

[poena.dare]

No, silly.

Bill Cosby eats babies to stay young.

Windows 7 and Dick Clark eat batteries to stay alive.

Re:almost fooled me...

[Stregano]

Windows 7 just gets the babies delivered to Bill Cosby

Re:almost fooled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Mr. Beck.

Re:almost fooled me...

[Verdatum]

they frced to kill there own babbies! I red it on teh news the othr day!

Re:almost fooled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mu.

Re:almost fooled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to ask them if Windows 7 has stopped killing babies, yet.

Re:almost fooled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Japanese conjugation: 'nai'

Re:almost fooled me...

[wild_quinine]

So, Windows 7 is still killing babies?

They haven't denied it yet.

Microsoft does not comment on rumours.

Re:It would have been a story if...

[Dr Caleb]

Just to play devil's advocate; are we sure it's not the battery or laptop manufacturers that are not admitting their mistake?

Not news - just like last time

[vcgodinich]

What's news here? Microsoft gets vague claims than win7 is killing batteries, with no hard data, no common variable, not even vaguely reproducable.

This isn't MS covering something up, there was never anything to cover up here.

Re:Not news - just like last time

[mcgrew]

* waves hand *

Re:Not news - just like last time

[stimpleton]

What's news here? Microsoft gets vague claims than win7 is killing batteries

No!. Read posts just above yours. Win7 is killing babies!

Re:Not news - just like last time

[BreenW]

Windows 7 is killing babies?

OMG, something needs to be done. I have a 6 month old.

Re:Not news - just like last time

[oji-sama]

Windows 7 is killing babies? OMG, something needs to be done. I have a 6 month old.

The baby should be safe in a month.

similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[FranTaylor]

Fedora recently added a feature named palimpsest that checks your hard drive. I did an upgrade and all of a sudden I am getting complaints about my hard drive being close to failure. I think "no way, this is a pretty new drive". But I dig deeper and sure enough the drive really is bad.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Naturalis Philosopho]

Bingo. If there's any story here, it's that Microsoft's reputation is so bad that people won't believe them even when they're right. That and that people aren't very technically minded. I once told my father to us a piece of software to monitor the SMART status on his HDD since it was "making a lot of noise". He just told me that he'd been doing it. About a year later he said that his laptop would barely run so I visited and noticed that the SMART was telling him that the HDD had irrecoverable errors and should be backed up and replaced immediately. When I asked how long it had been saying that, he replied that it had always said that (or something like it) since he first checked (at my encouragement). He just didn't think that it could be a real problem since the computer still ran at that time. Let's face it here, if a person is running Windows, they aren't going to believe that there's a problem until they can't work 'cause Windows gives alert after alert after alert and how can you know which ones to believe unless you're a "techie"? Sure if, you're reading here, you'll know, but 98% of people just don't.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Velorium]

I don't have mod points today or else I'd give this a +1. I hope this can suffice.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wasting mod points to respond, but I just had to jump in here with some evidence to the contrary... For years and years few people believed that Toyota cars had problems with their acceleration, nor their brakes. Toyota was a company with a good reputation (although some of us noticed a substantial amount of hubris on their part in the last decade, which made people like me stop buying them.) IIRC, a lot of people here on slashdot thought it was all the fault of the floor mat or driver error and didn't believe that the manufacturer was at fault. Lo and behold, there is a real problem and it's now come out that not only did Toyota have serious problems, their CEOs knowingly downplayed the importance of it rather than investigate it. To top it off, it's now coming to light that there is a problem with the sensors in the Prius brakes too.

The point here is that companies DO sometimes lie or act incompetantly, and the general populace DOES ACT hysterically sometimes. You just can't make a blanket statement saying X is guilty or Y isn't without investigating. Reputation only goes so far.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[SnarfQuest]

Windows trains people to ignore messages, simply by bombarding them with constant warnings. In order to get anything done, you have to click on messages to allow you to run non-Microsoft programs, you have to click more to get past the windows update messages, messages to install anything, messages to get to certain web sites, messages for this and that. You end up not bothering to read them so that you have time to actually use the computer, and most people don't understand the messages anyway. By bombarding the user with constant useless messages, they don't notice when something is actually seriously wrong.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[White Flame]

Give him a car analogy, like he's driving with his "Check Engine" or oil light on.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

What bullshit are you spewing?

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[bertok]

Bingo. If there's any story here, it's that Microsoft's reputation is so bad that people won't believe them even when they're right. That and that people aren't very technically minded. I once told my father to us a piece of software to monitor the SMART status on his HDD since it was "making a lot of noise". He just told me that he'd been doing it. About a year later he said that his laptop would barely run so I visited and noticed that the SMART was telling him that the HDD had irrecoverable errors and should be backed up and replaced immediately. When I asked how long it had been saying that, he replied that it had always said that (or something like it) since he first checked (at my encouragement). He just didn't think that it could be a real problem since the computer still ran at that time. Let's face it here, if a person is running Windows, they aren't going to believe that there's a problem until they can't work 'cause Windows gives alert after alert after alert and how can you know which ones to believe unless you're a "techie"? Sure if, you're reading here, you'll know, but 98% of people just don't.

However, the habit of just clicking "OK" to everything is at least partially Microsoft's fault. Their software systematically trains people to accept that popup warnings are going to occur over and over for perfectly innocuous reasons.

"This website is safely encrypted for YOUR PROTECTION! Click OK to accept your increased safety!"

"You may be.. omg.. submitting... INFORMATION to a web site! Panic now! Or just click OK!"

"You are changing the critical system setting 'background color'. Are you sure? ARE YOU? Then click OK!" ... 500,000 of those later ...

"Your mass storage device is reporting a fault status code... Click OK like you do every time!"

There's no ordinary user on earth who'll pay the slightest attention to that after being subjected to a bazillion meaningless warnings for years before.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[SilverEyes]

Mod points are so fleeting..

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[superstick58]

Ummm, you realize that the software was giving a replacement warning for a YEAR. In other words, there was not a significant problem. A warning should not be given "all the time" unless death of the device is imminent and certain. Warn once, twice, or thrice and let it be until a more critical threshold is met. A good model is the battery monitor (not battery health but battery charge). It will warn once at 10% or whatever that you had better save or face a shutdown on low battery. It will then take a more drastic action either with a stricter warning or an auto-standby to protect the system from creating errors.

Harddrive warning 1 = "Harddrive has failures. Performance is decreased. Consider backing up data"

Harddrive warning 2 = "Harddrive is significantly damaged. Consider immediate replacement"

Harddrive warning 3 = "Harddrive WILL FAIL TOMORROW!"

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[flatrock]

It's nothing new. Windows has long gotten the blame for the consequences of buggy software and device drivers developed by others. They have come a long way toward reducing what mistakes made by others can crash the OS, but any kernel mode device driver can crash Windows, or any other operating system for that matter.

I've unfortunately released some drivers with bugs myself that I've had to fix at the insistance of justifiably irate customers.

What's different about this is they are getting blameed for messages they are passing on that come from the hardware.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[cranky_chemist]

...Microsoft's reputation is so bad that people won't believe them even when they're right...

Bill Maher once said, concerning the OJ Simpson case, that "the LAPD is so incompetent they couldn't frame a guilty man."

I think MS and the LAPD have more in common than meets the eye.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[bakawolf]

or perhaps it was: "Harddrive has failures! it could stop spinning or booting tomorrow, or the next time it recieves a slight shock!" "Oh noes! your hard drive finally got the last little bump!"

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Wumpus]

Bingo. If there's any story here, it's that Microsoft's reputation is so bad that people won't believe them even when they're right.

Maybe they don't believe them because they can't understand them. Maybe it has something to do with Microsoft somehow thinking that sentences like "To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state" mean something.

Microsoft has gotten really bad at communicating in plain English in recent years. It's been a while since I saw an official communication from Microsoft that I could understand without some frowning and head scratching.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Give him a car analogy, like he's driving with his "Check Engine" or oil light on.

There's a reason they're also called "idiot lights", yanno?
(They shine their light at the idiot, tee hee)

captcha: dealing (hmm, with idiots? Yep.)

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

the check engine light in my ford escort has been on for the past 7+ years...........

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[slo]

Let's face it here, if a person is running Windows, they aren't going to believe that there's a problem until they can't work 'cause Windows gives alert after alert after alert and how can you know which ones to believe unless you're a "techie"? Sure if, you're reading here, you'll know, but 98% of people just don't.

If you're reading here there's a good chance your aren't running Windows and just came for the Schadenfreude.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Razalhague]

Well, it's doing a fine job of telling you that there's something wrong with your car. Most likely it's the light, but it never occured to you to have the warning signal fixed so it could actually warn you when there's a more serious problem?

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[karnal]

I did the same thing with Ubuntu. Booted into it after ignoring it for a few months - since it's a laptop, it's usually running XP for my wife's Facebook escapades. Drive had thousands of write errors - apparently recorded by the hard drive.

Windows didn't let me know about it. Durrrrr. Maybe there's an app to load to do that; however that same evening I jumped on newegg and ordered a new laptop drive (IDE - older laptop.) Still running just fine!

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[marcosdumay]

Completely agree that "Windows gives alert after alert after alert and how can you know which ones to believe unless you're a "techie"?". But SMART is not one of the alerts I trust a lot. HD errors are random, and just because you got a bunch of them, it doesn't mean that soon you'll get more. It may happen, or not. SMART can tell you when it won't be able to recover the next error (because it is out of sectors to map), but not when everything will fail. As always, keep backups, and if you aren't on hight availability stuff, you can ignore SMART at will.

As an anedocte, one of the disks on the computer I'm using now has the SMART "That disk will probably fail in a week" by five years now.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

> But I dig deeper and sure enough the drive really is bad. ...or, probably, that it reports some S.M.A.R.T. warning signals. It probably wasn't bad in the sense of actually giving your wrong data. It's easy to take these warnings too seriously and not think of the costs of the false positives.

False positives, of course cost real money. $50 or $100 per false prediction of failure. You toss out the disk, you believe it was bad, and you never give it a chance to prove that it would have run for another year or so. It's easy to believe the warning messages. But do you really *know* the disk was about to fail?

Er, actually not.

I chucked out an old disk drive and spent about 5 hours reinstalling Ubuntu. On the *second*, newer computer, I got a bit suspicious. I found a paper by Pinheiro, Weber and Barroso
at Google: http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

The found that "Despite [correlations between failure rates and SMART data] we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures."

Specifically, from discussions on Redhat's list, Palimpsest bases many warnings on reallocated sectors, but Google says "85% of drives survive more than 8 months after their first reallocation." And further, they state "Out of all failed drives, over 56% have no signal on any of the four strong SMART signals... Actual useful models, which need to have small false-positive error rates are in fact likely to do much worse than these limits might suggest."

See http://kochanski.org/blog/?p=244 for the statistical background.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[marcosdumay]

Any meaning MS put on that message would be reason for a lawsuit, so MS creates a message with no meaning.

Next on PR 101, how to use jargon for hiding misfeatures on your products.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's any story here, it's that Microsoft's reputation "on slashdot" is so bad that people won't believe them even when they're right

Fixed that for ya.

The rest of the world, sadly doesn't know or care.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

People are the same with everything. There are just as many people who will happily drive their car around with the Check Engine light on because "the car is still working".

Does that count as a car analogy too?

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Tawnos]

It's an engineering blog, not a general consumer blog. Purportedly, you should be smart enough to understand it if you're seeking it out to read.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Wumpus]

Engineers tend to speak plainly and to the point. Most straight thinking technical people wouldn't want to work in a place where people utter phrases like "the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge." This is bullshit. If you don't know something, say "I don't know," not "to the best of the universal flux's knowledge."

More on that here: http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/30.html

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

"Collective ecosystem" is a term that means something. It means, not just Microsoft's knowledge, but battery makers, etc.. It's not an everyday term, but any technical person should be able to understand it and use it in a sentence.

The part of that sentence you quoted that gives me grief is "Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and ...". It seems like warning is used as a verb here. That's confusing grammar. It's plain and to the point, and confusing.

"Engineers tend to speak plainly and to the point"

Engineers tend to speak in extraordinarily incomprehensible jargon and to the point. This is a well known stereotype.

The linked article is funny, because half of that really doesn't mean anything outside of a certain bubble.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[ae1294]

Most of the time when check engine light comes on the issue is related to the emissions system. Some car companies even set it to turn on at predefined mileages to get you to bring in the car for "preventative" maintenance. Mostly the check engine light can be ignored safely for short periods of time but if it's a blinking then you will probably notice something is really wrong.

In the long run it's not good to ignore the light as you can destroy expensive parts of your car's emissions system like the catalytic converter. Most auto stores have a reader that can tell you why the light is on and will check it for free. You can then look up the code online to see what the deal is. Some times seemly silly things like not screwing the gas cap on tight enough makes the light come on.

There is a reason why cars still have the check oil light. Never ever ignore that light, stop your car at once unless you plan on buying a new one. Even if you check the oil level and it seems ok do not restart the car until you get someone to look over it.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Wumpus]

It means something to the author. A lot less to anyone who might read his words. The term is probably thrown around a lot at Microsoft, and the author makes the unwarranted assumption that people outside of Microsoft are supposed to try and figure out what he writes, instead of him trying to figure out a way to convey his idea to his readers. He's obviously free to do so, but he runs the risk of being misunderstood and looking like an arrogant prick.

Without an intimate knowledge of Microsoft's internal culture, can you point to anything in the words "collective ecosystem" that would imply that anyone spoke to battery manufacturers, or even Microsoft's engineers, for that matter? The term could mean anything at all, which amounts to having no meaning at all.

I don't work at Microsoft. I worked with people who have, and from my experience with them I can determine with some certainty that "collective ecosystem" doesn't mean "a sampling of Microsoft's engineers, as well as our hardware partners' engineers" but rather "a guy who fancies himself a UI expert who happened to be drunk when we asked him." But I could be wrong. It could actually mean "an interaction of life forms and dependence within a physical, non-biological framework on which the living forms in turn have some effect. [1]"

But that wouldn't make much sense, would it? But then again, neither does the original sentence.

[1] From Granite Outcrops: A Collective Ecosystem, by B York Main, Department of Zoology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands Western Australia 6907

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Xest]

"Bingo. If there's any story here, it's that Microsoft's reputation is so bad that people won't believe them even when they're right."

Or just that FOSS trolls like to make a non-story into a big story, because to the trolls of the community, pratting around with shit like that is apparently more important than actually providing better software, like, you know, versions of Open Office that are actually better than MS Office, versions of Eclipse that are actually better than Visual Studio and so on.

Really, if you think people would react any differently to the same errors popping up on Linux, or Mac OSX then you're delusional. People don't care until it finally stops working and really does actually effect them. I used to work in IT support some years back for schools, and we'd always tell teachers to keep a backup of any work they do on their laptop and none of them listened, but they all came crying when their laptop failed, was run over by a car, was dropped by a kid and so forth.

Windows really doesn't give alert after alert unless there's actually something wrong. If it's chucking up an error, then there is an error, it's really not hard to read the popup and see if it's an error you care about - sure you may choose to ignore "This computer has no anti-virus software installed on it, click here for help installing some" but then don't cry when you get a virus. Similarly, if it comes up and says "Windows delayed write failed" then yeah it's not easy for the average Joe to understand, but it's still good reason for them to figure that something isn't right, whether it's that they pulled out a USB pen drive in the middle of writing to it, or whether their hard drive is outright failing, the fact is, something went wrong, ignore it and accept the consequences. I've certainly never seen a popup in the tray that I "don't believe", because they've always alerted me to the facts, I'm not aware of any circumstances where Windows makes up errors for the sake of it.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Xest]

That's stupid, there's no possible way for an OS or even necessarily the hardware to tell if a few new bad clusters that have been found is just that, a slight glitch on the drive, or if it's a sign of the read/write head being only a short time away from crashing into the platters having just bumped it ever so slightly damaging those clusters.

It's far better to do what it does, and play it safe, than ignore what could possibly be a serious problem, otherwise people like you would whinge that Windows didn't tell you the drive was going to crash today.

Error detection is one thing, being able to predict when different types of hardware like the hard drive are going to fail is a fantasy. Sure with batteries and such you can give rough estimates, but you can't realistically predict when a hard drive, processor, RAM, optical drive or anything like that are going to specifically fail.

If there's even a slight error on a hard drive, it's time to backup and replace, sure it might keep on running as in the parents post, but you'd be stupid to keep risking your data on it.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[gravis777]

This is really no surprise to me. I have people telling me there is something wrong with their laptop because its slow to load stuff up and the battery only seems to last half an hour. I ask them how new it is, and they are like, "Oh, its fairly new, I just bought the thing in April of 2007".

I got a fairly new laptop that I have been running Windows 7 (actual release, betas and RCs) for about a year now. I can tell you that Windows 7 is not depleting my battery any faster than any other OS. If this was a true problem, it would be reproducable, and many more people than this would be having this issue.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Naturalis Philosopho]

Thanks for making my later point that most people don't get/read the UI messages that pop up constantly. I know you do, it's the average Joe that doesn't; and sorry to tell you that there are a lot more of them than us. I only picked on Windows as it's both the object of the discussion and the worst offender at "alert me about everything". Remember that little story about the boy who cried wolf?

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Palimpsest is a pile of crap. I had the same thing and dug a little deeper and the drive was fine.

Re:similar story with Fedora and hard drives

[Xest]

Well yeah, I don't disagree with the fact not all users understand them, but I disagree entirely with your conclusion that that has any relevance to the story of the boy who cried wolf, because all error messages matter- there are no fake messages, no made up messages.

The issue is that users can't be bothered to investigate the problem, because after all it's only a computer right? Half the time they get away with it, the other half it comes back to bite them and they lose all their data, and learn the hard way.

It's really the same with cars, except a higher proportion of people pay attention to warning lights in cars because they're scared shitless if their car breaks whilst driving it'll kill them, many drivers still don't understand what the light means though but realise a warning is a warning, and seek professional support on it if they can't figure it out themselves. There's still a large amount of people out there that do ignore warning lights though, plenty of people drive round with the empty light on thinking oh I'll get some petrol soon, and then run out and need to be rescued.

See, the issue isn't the warnings, that there's too many, or lack of, the warnings are fine, they all alert to actual problems, they don't warn about non-existent problems or anything like that, the issue is simply that there are simply a lot of users out there who are lazy and like to play it lucky, half of them get bitten and lose all their data or whatever, the other half just get lucky, at least for now, chances are they'll join the other subset in getting bitten at some point.

"Ecosystem knowledge" ?

[Gothmolly]

Wtf is this, aren't techies supposed to be, you know, techy? What's next, power (not di-lithium) crystals and mood rings to diagnose BSoDs ?

Re:"Ecosystem knowledge" ?

[hemlock00]

Probably easier to diagnose with the mood ring then the BSoD error message it spits out.

Sheesh.

[Esther Schindler]

FYI, If you know that your battery has plenty of juice left, there's a fix available. Sort of. The #5 item in Fixing Five Common Windows 7 Annoyances is "the undead battery." One way to know if it's necessary:

To see if your battery problems are likely to come from this conflict between Windows 7 and your hardware run the powercfg -energy command from a command prompt. If the result is that Windows was unable to determine the battery’s capacity, sooner or later you will see the misleading error messages or have the laptop shutdown prematurely.

Re:Sheesh.

[MrMr]

How do you fix a non existing problem?
Or are you suggesting TFA is just BS?

Re:Sheesh.

[Stregano]

Wait, an undead battery? Like a zombie battery?

Re:Sheesh.

[Qzukk]

Like a zombie battery?

Yes. When it starts getting low, it moans MAAAAIIINNNNSSSS

Re:Sheesh.

[Esther Schindler]

Let's just say that I don't think the end of the tale has been reached yet.

Re:Sheesh.

[Anonymous Coward]

so... you just referenced an article that proves Microsoft is lying. Huh... interesting.

Re:Sheesh.

[Esther Schindler]

Lying implies ill intent. "Wrong" does not. Or perhaps "We don't have all the facts yet and neither do they." (I have such a habit of trying to be fair....)

Re:Sheesh.

[Centurix]

Christ, where's my mod points when I need them.

Re:Sheesh.

[Razalhague]

No, that's what regular batteries do. Zombie batteries moan all the time.

Must be the newest OS fad

[Kitkoan]

First Apple had laptop battery issues with OS 10.6 (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2139186&tstart=0) and now it's Microsoft with Windows 7. Two completely different OS's both suffering from the same style of issue in their newest product. Are they both using a shared driver code in their newest OS that is causing this? Did they only implemented in these changes in these new OS's or did they get patched in their older OS's too?

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[e2d2]

More likely is that batteries are having their very limited lifetimes exposed to the user via the OS. Most people think a laptop battery is supposed to last indefinitely and charge the same every single time. The reality is you'll probably be replacing the battery before you replace the laptop.

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[vlm]

Two completely different OS's both suffering from the same style of issue in their newest product.

The problem is as old as laptops themselves. Look at all the entertainment linux laptop users have had for decades now.

Here is the problem:

1) Laptop mfgr only make the ACPI stuff work just barely well enough on a good day to sometimes work on the version of windows the laptop shipped with.

2) Laptop mfgr has no motivation to patch, if anything they'd tell you to buy a new one.

3) Even for vertically integrated companies (Apple) its entirely possible they don't have a stable of every combination of hardware and BIOS/EFI/firmware they've ever sold. And/or testing accidentally skipped the wrong one.

Its odd how generally speaking, no one screws up the keyboard port, which on PCs is a hideously complicated synchronous serial microcontroller based thingy with A20 gates and such and even worse its often done in emulation and converted over USB, but generally speaking, almost everyone screws up battery monitoring, which need be little more than a single port A/D converter.

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people think a laptop battery is supposed to last indefinitely and charge the same every single time.

It had better if you have an Apple product. You can't really just go out and buy a new one.

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[Kitkoan]

It had better if you have an Apple product. You can't really just go out and buy a new one.

I think you can if you take it to an Apple store. Just because its not something an end user can't do doesn't mean that it's not able to be done by anyone.

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[zippthorne]

You should ditch the laptop before you replace the battery.

If you're lucky, you might be able to get a fresh battery, but form factors change over the years, and if your laptop lasts a couple, then its parts haven't been made in a while. So you're either going to get an OEM part that's been in long-term storage, a "refurbished" OEM part of unknown cycle-life, or you're going to get a third-party part of questionable quality.

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[Tak_1]

Sure you can, its held in with one plug and a couple of y head screws and it just lifts out. They finally made it all easy to replace. And everyone sells aftermarket batteries. Usually better than stock. But I always let Apple replace the first one free. Why not? I paid for it.

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[e2d2]

I think it really depends on usage. If you are a traveler and you really do use a full charge and then recharge every time you'll have a shorter battery lifespan than a home user who leaves the machine on the plug. They say 18-24 months typically (Using dell as an example) but I would bet that lifetime is significantly shortened by users who fully discharge/recharge more often.

Re:Must be the newest OS fad

[Anonymous Coward]

This! Right here! Mod parent up!

For years, and years, and years we've known that ACPI/power management implementations on most personal computers are just north of COMPLETELY AWFUL.
Need proof? Ask any linux kernel developer that has to deal with ACPI. The standard is treated more like a loose, optional guideline by hardware manufactures. If the machine boots windows, then it's considered ship-able from a power management standpoint!

Dell seems pretty good about this, actually. (In that they actually fix ACPI problems on their computers) On any machine that they officially support for linux, you'll see linux power management issues detailed fixed in most of the bios revisions for that given product.

In any case, I bet this is Microsoft being bitten by the same issues. Windows 7 is supposed to have aggressive, good power management (one of the biggest complaints about vista is laptop battery life) and now that they've implemented it maybe it's exposing the bad hadware implementations that laptop sellers have been passing off to us customers. Maybe microsoft is sick of taking the blame for crappy batteries and laptops with buggy/bad power management features, and is telling users upfront that there are battery problems.

How about people think this through?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why are you assuming there is a coverup. Windows has never done this in the past. Its a ne feature in 7. So someone upgrades and bam....warning. What is the first thing someone is going to assume?

And if this was Apple everyone would be lactating over how this isn't Apple's fault...fracking double standards.

Re:How about people think this through?

[SargentDU]

No, they would be saying it was Apples fault, remember that Apple makes their hardware as well as software. That would be exactly Apples fault.

Re:How about people think this through?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they would be saying it was Apple's suppliers fault, remember that Apple re-brands their off-the-shelf hardware as well as software. That would be exactly not Apples fault.

FTFY

PS) CAPTCHA for this post: optimism

Re:How about people think this through?

[STRICQ]

> .snip. remember that Apple re-brands their off-the-shelf hardware as well as software. Now that's hilarious!

In related news

[SnarfQuest]

Umbrella Corp says that its virus is not causing people to turn into zombies. However, we were unable to get more information from their spokesman, as he was killed by zombie dogs.

Re:In related news

[Cryacin]

Those dogs wouldn't have gotten much nutrition out of him. Once you get past all the crap, he's just a pair of lips and a briefcase!

Re:In related news

[tftp]

Once you get past all the crap, he's just a pair of lips and a briefcase!

You obviously don't own a dog, otherwise you'd know what dogs like to eat :-)

Wha??

[Itninja]

"To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state."

Can a brother get some restrictive clauses and pronouns up in here?

Not dead

[Lost Penguin]

Microsoft: Oh yes, the, uh, the Battery...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
          Laptop owner: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
          Microsoft: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
          Laptop owner: Look, matey, I know a dead battery when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
          Microsoft: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkably charged, the Battery, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
          Laptop owner: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
          Microsoft: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!

Re:Not dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have the names reversed.

Re:Not dead

[maxwell demon]

"tfosorciM" and "renwo potpal"? :-)

Re:Not dead

[MBCook]

Microsoft: Bring out your dead batteries.
Microsoft: Here's one.
Customer: It's not dead.
Microsoft: Yes it is.
Customer: But it still holds a little charge.
Microsoft: Not really. It's as good as dead.
Customer: Look! It plays YouTube for over 2 minutes.
Microsoft: It's dead. Do we need to come back later?
Customer: But it's still good. It's happy!
Microsoft: *THWACK*
Microsoft: There. Now it's dead.
Customer: You killed my battery!
Microsoft: No we didn't. It was already dead.

Re:Not dead

[colinrichardday]

Microsoft: No, 'e's just pining for the fjords of Redmond!

Re:Not dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the opposit problem. I sent my laptop away to get fixed, and included battery is dead in the list of problems.

I got it back with a note saying: "battery lasts over an hour in windows xp." The battery was a massive 9-cell that originally got 5-6h in xp.

That's way under the 40% that windows 7 complains about.

Re:Not dead

[dredwerker]

Microsoft: Oh yes, the, uh, the Battery...What's,uh...What's wrong with it? Laptop owner: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it! Microsoft: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting. Laptop owner: Look, matey, I know a dead battery when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now. Microsoft: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkably charged, the Battery, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage! Laptop owner: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead. Microsoft: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!

Its a Norwegian blue battery.

Re:It would have been a story if...

[Ethanol-fueled]

FYI: My Ubuntu install on a Dell laptop throws the same warning ("Warning, maximum battery charge is 44% battery may be old or defective yadda yadda") I never saw on XP, though I doubt that XP had that kind of warning system in place. My battery is an official Dell part, but to be fair, it is an old battery.

The warning systems are glitchy, or that manufacturers have been shipping substandard batteries and/or power subsystems. Either would come as no surprise.

It happened to me!!

[Xanator]

Actually this problem actually happened to me, I updated my HP notebook from Vista to windows 7 and within a week it told me my battery was useless, to be honest it never occurred to me that it could be a problem with the OS, specially since days later the video card melted, so the battery problem didn't seem that important compared to the dead video card :(, still saving to fix that laptop, i really liked it

Re:It happened to me!!

[RealErmine]

Actually this problem actually happened to me, I updated my HP notebook from Vista to windows 7 and within a week it told me my battery was useless, to be honest it never occurred to me that it could be a problem with the OS, specially since days later the video card melted, so the battery problem didn't seem that important compared to the dead video card :(, still saving to fix that laptop, i really liked it

Sounds like a great machine.

Re:It happened to me!!

[Xanator]

LOL I know but it has hdmi port (which isn't common on a laptop on my country), and was of perfect size for playing WoW everywhere

Ubuntu does this to...

[Skuld-Chan]

Before anyone gets too excited Ubuntu does this too. It told me on my old IBM T40 that the battery only had 50% capacity every time I switched it on - yes it was a very older battery with very little capacity.

Re:It would have been a story if...

[Zocalo]

I think that is what Microsoft is implying, without directly pointing a finger and risking a potential law suit.

Chances are that a lot of cells that are only now ending up in laptop batteries have spent quite some time sat on a warehouse shelf somewhere waiting out the financial downturn. Now that there are signs of recovery and people are buying laptops again, the production chain is starting up and those cells are finally going into laptop batteries. However, since the battery as a whole was only assembled last week, say, despite the fact that the component cells were manufactured last year, care to guess which date gets to go on the "Date of manufacture" sticker?

And what if Windows 7 is the cause?

[Fri13]

Okay, I saw this in the news when it came. I thought "Okay, some laptops seems to have problems." But I do not think so anymore. Why?

a) I have three laptops.
1. 4 years old (2006), Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1645 (windows 7, Linux 2.6.31)
2. 1.5 years old (2008) Acer Aspire 1520 (Windows 7, Linux 2.6.31)
3. 3 months old (2009) Asus EeePC 1008HA (Windows 7, Windows XP, Linux 2.6.31, latest stable FreeBSD)
(Okay, they are not all mine, only the newest)

b) I now run dual- or quadboot on every one of them with Windows 7, Windows XP, + Linux 2.6.33 (Distro = Mandriva 2010.0) (+FreeBSD = latest FreeBSD stable)

c) I needed to install Windows 7 just on last sunday (family pack)

Here is estimation of battery state in hourhs when WWW surfing, coding and compiling stuff (usually the 2. and 3.)

1. 1h 15min.
2. 1h
3. 5-6 hours

These are on FreeBSD and Linux and Windows XP.

Windows 7 gives these.

1. about 30-35 minutes.
2. None..... NONE!
3. 1.5-2 hours!!!

Okay.... is Microsoft now really saying that my 3 MONTHS OLD BATTERY (6-cells) is DYING? And that 1h battery what has worked fine with Linux OS from last 2.6.28-2.6.31 releases is ALREADY DEAD?

Why does Windows 7 eat the battery but when I boot to other software system I get just normal times?????

I have only one thing to say. Sorry about bad language (and typos!): Microsoft, GO TO YOURSELF!!! And I cant not even RETURN THE "#!"#! Family Pack!

Re:And what if Windows 7 is the cause?

[Stregano]

Now here is something that will really bake your noodle: how positive are you about which one is correct?

I have personally never owned a laptop that has lasted more than 4 hours on a battery.

Re:And what if Windows 7 is the cause?

[shutdown -p now]

So leave the laptop running and measure how long it takes for it to die, then you'll know if 7 is giving you bullshit, or is the proverbial Cassandra.

Re:And what if Windows 7 is the cause?

[KarmaMB84]

You upgraded a pair of netbooks and a 4 year old laptop to Windows 7 and you're shocked it doesn't work well (or at all)?

Re:And what if Windows 7 is the cause?

[Fri13]

Seems you have not used Windows 7 and noticed how well it run on slower computers even with 512 RAM. It can be (not with every computer) faster than XP with fresh install and it stays longer running well. Now I want to know how well does it run on these laptops well until starts slowing down.

I do not trust that myth that you need latest hardware to run the Windows. Thats why I skipped Windows Vista totally because it was crap. 7 is what Vista should be and as far it has worked but it just is eating all the batter and I can not trust it is the fault of firmware or anything outside of Windows 7. Because if earlier release of Windows or other OS's and their heavier systems can not suffer it, what is the problem then in them.

Re:And what if Windows 7 is the cause?

[godefroi]

XP was painful with 512MB. You're not going to convince me that 7 runs well with that amount of memory, not ever.

Keep in mind that I really like 7 (though I didn't hate Vista either... I always ran it on high-spec machines).

Lamest blog ever

[SirGarlon]

Is it just me, or does the Windows 7 engineering blog post strike you as a bit ... defensive?

As we have talked about many times, we have a relentless focus on the quality of Windows 7 and we take seriously any reports we receive that indicate a potential problem that could result in a significant failure of the OS.

Talked about many times? Maybe in meetings at Microsoft HQ, but not on that blog (whose previous update was August 2009). Which is a pity, because blogging about how to achieve quality in a product as complex as Windows 7 could be downright interesting. This really seems like a missed opportunity to improve Microsoft's image with the technically literate audience.

Re:Lamest blog ever

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree they talked about it many times -- just not recently. The August 2009 update was specifically about that topic, too. Hardly surprising once Windows 7 was code complete.

If you look at the comments sections, you'll see one or two repeat customers who rail on the same pet topic that nobody cares about over and over and over again (like the guy who wants Microsoft to pressure monitor makers to standardize on lower-resolution monitors rather than support high-DPI), a lot of flybys with their One Important Issue, a few fanboys singing the praises, and only very occasionally a technically competent engagement. It could be that the truly technically literate audience doesn't post much, but otherwise I don't see much evidence that it was working when the blog was active.

Re:Lamest blog ever

[Tawnos]

It was quite active during the engineering of Win7. Post-RTM perhaps it should be called the Windows7SE (sustained engineering) blog.

Remember Kids...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 doesn't kill batteries, people kill batteries.

Re:Remember Kids...

[kisak]

Windows 7 doesn't kill batteries, people using Windows 7 kill batteries.

Re:Remember Kids...

[dredwerker]

Windows 7 doesn't kill batteries, people kill batteries.

no -wrappers do

We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

Windows Seven's problem is not that it's doing the wrong thing, it's because it's trying to be too smart about it. It's not smart. It's stupid. A laptop computer (running ANY OS) isn't as smart as a lizard.

But its user's smart. If your software is stupid (and all software is stupid), and the user is smart (and all users are smarter than their computer, even when they're stupid) then you're better off admitting it than trying to fake it.

Instead of popping up a "your battery might be about to fail", give us a gas gauge. "Your battery has only [====> 40% ---] of original capacity". Show that for *all* batteries. Let people pop that up even if there's no problem. Let people be smart about it. Or even... let people be dumb about it.

You might find that people are more willing to replace batteries when they get down to 20%. You might think that's stupid. And it may be stupid. But it's still smarter than stupid software trying to be smart.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[vlm]

Instead of popping up a "your battery might be about to fail", give us a gas gauge. "Your battery has only [====> 40% ---] of original capacity". Show that for *all* batteries.

A car analogy? On slashdot? Unpossible. Anyways:

Well, more like the accelerator pedal is sticking, and corporate HQ says there's no problem here please move along, and eventually too many pedals are sticking, and then the govt (whom owns their main competitor) starts squawking, then everyone whom was playing World of Warcraft while driving and had an accident gets the bright idea of blaming the gas pedal instead, next thing you know...

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[solsang]

As seen in the many postings replying to the link, the problem seems to be windows 7 using the battery "design capacity" value which in many cases are wrong, thus making the warning and possible causing haywire in the charging system Thus it is a real issue with many new batteries of various types and m$ is flatly denying it without reading the possible solution and test suggestions in the comment thread...

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[arikol]

Yes, the user is smart and the OS and computer are both stupid.

HOWEVER, the user may be a very smart doctor (brick layer, astronaut, deep sea diver etc.) which does not necessarily make the user comfortable with computers or an OS.
The OS should assist the user by giving him all the information he needs in real human language.
If the assistance means showing a warning symbol on the battery and a popup (on hover) sayin "this battery will need replacing soon" or "this battery REEEEALLLLYYY needs replacing now" then that is what is required.

We technonerds who feel comfortable screwing our laptop computers apart and can look up all pertinent data (and understand it) are only a very small minority. Most users can use google in a very limited fashion and don't understand the difference between a .dll and a .avi
Not because they are stupid, but rather because they focus their brainpower on other things (brain surgery, for instance)

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[MBCook]

40% implies the battery is still useful. Unlike a gas tank which the 2nd to last gallon is as good as the first, once a battery hits 60% or so it gets useless. Worse, the drop is exponential, so you can't say "60% = 0%" and scale things out. And since the time left depends on the current draw, 60% for a typist compared to a YouTube addict.

I'd say the real problem is this technology has been around for years but users haven't seen it until now. Their battery has been dying for years, their computer knew it, but it didn't tell them.

The software isn't trying to be smart. It's telling you exactly what your manufacturer did. Let's use another car analogy.

"Your tires are too low"

You don't wait until your tires are at 2psi to fix them, you fix them THEN. It's a warning something catastrophic will happen soon (you can't rely on a charge to power your laptop long), not that something bad might happen sooner or later if maybe you don't do a ton. This seems better than someone charging their laptop and taking it on a business trip and finding out it's only good for 1/2 hour. "But the software said I had 60% of my rated watt hours!"

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[Cryacin]

The smart treating the stupid as stupid and the smart as smart, rather than the stupid as smart and the smart as stupid!

GENIUS!!!

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[poopdeville]

When did Honda get bailed out??!?!?!?!

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[flatrock]

You're assuming that Windows gets such information from the BIOS. How does Windows even know what the original capacity is? It appears the BIOS is indicating that the battery is no longer working within specifications. Windows doesn't even know what those specifications are unless that's something it can read from the hardware.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no English major but I'm pretty sure when it's a proper noun you don't spell out the number, even if it's less than 10.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

The software isn't trying to be smart. It's telling you exactly what your manufacturer did.

Is it? The manufacturer only provides one bit of information?

You don't wait until your tires are at 2psi to fix them, you fix them THEN.

When I stick a tire gauge in my tire, it doesn't say "bad" (without telling me whether "bad" means "2PSI" or "20PSI"), it tells me "2PSI" or "20PSI" or "30PSI" or "32PSI" or "35PSI".

I also have a cap on my tire that goes red when it goes below 30PSI. When I see that, I pump them up. When I check and it says "32PSI" I pump them up. If I'm having to pump them up a couple of times a week, I go down to Sears.

I don't have to depend on an idiot light that came on at 20PSI (which is definitely low enough to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT), with no indication whether it was 20PSI or 2PSI. Because I *also* have a gauge.

I'm not asking Microsoft to get rid if the warning, I'm asking them to let me know what my tire pressure is.

It doesn't *matter* if it's not linear. My gas tank isn't linear. So long as I *know* it's not linear I can deal with it.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

If the assistance means showing a warning symbol on the battery and a popup (on hover) sayin "this battery will need replacing soon" or "this battery REEEEALLLLYYY needs replacing now" then that is what is required.

That's fine. But TELL THE USER WHY as well. Because some of those doctors are pretty tech savvy after all.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

Honestly dumb software would have solved that too.

When people bought new batteries and popped them in and they showed "this battery has [====65%=>----] of original capacity".

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[AK Marc]

It doesn't *matter* if it's not linear. My gas tank isn't linear. So long as I *know* it's not linear I can deal with it.

Your battery life isn't linear, but how can you tell? You know about your gas tank because you go through it at least once a month. If you go through batteries once a year, you are using more than average, and still at 1/12 the level of your gas tank. People are smart and ignorant. Computers are myopically omnipotent and dumb as a rock. The problem is that computers are being programed to share their stupid assembly of a subset of facts as a logical conclusion when the only "logic" they know is NAND.

So you are agreeing that the range can be deceptive. Neither it, nor your gas tank are linear, and without more knowledge or experience, it will be misleading. You have learned for your car, but it's likely a home user will ever learn for a battery. They just aren't consumed fast enough.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[MBCook]

Is it? The manufacturer only provides one bit of information?

The manufacturer says you should consider replacing your battery when it loses x% of it's rated watt-hours. The error message says your battery has reached x% of it's rated watt-hours and may need to be replaced. Sounds right to me.

When I stick a tire gauge in my tire, it doesn't say "bad"

But I said the tire pressure warning light. They come on and say "your tires may have a problem". Your car may show your pressure (like the warning message does), or you can look it up yourself (like you can on the battery with the right tool). But the warning message here functions exactly like a tire pressure warning light. This isn't an all consuming battery infocenter, it's a warning that things may have reached a critical level.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

You have learned for your car, but it's likely a home user will ever learn for a battery. They just aren't consumed fast enough.

That's what google's for. So no individual user needs to go through batteries that fast.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

The manufacturer says you should consider replacing your battery when it loses x% of it's rated watt-hours. The error message says your battery has reached x% of it's rated watt-hours and may need to be replaced. Sounds right to me.

Yeh, my inkjet printer has a recommended ink level, too, and the ink warning light comes on about half way through the useful life of the cartridge.

But the warning message here functions exactly like a tire pressure warning light.

Which can come on when my tires are fine for another mile to the next gas station, or it can come on when I've got enough air to get home and then stop off at the gas station on my way to work, or it can come on because I'm riding on my rims and I need to stop and switch to the spare.

If my car had a tire pressure warning light that could ALSO tell me what the tire pressure was, but the manufacturer had decided not to provide that information, I'd be pissed off about that too. Chevy only gets a "pass" because it would likely increase the cost of the transducer and display by a factor of 10 or so to do that.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[Anonymous Coward]

this would never fly, since people would freak when they see that lithiums lose 20% capacity the first month, before the long steady march to 20% (where it's effectively dead).

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[trouser]

Smarter than a dead lizard. Can't play minesweeper on a lizard. Lizards don't even have batteries.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[AK Marc]

That's what google's for.

For what? Spending 10 hours per component of every device you own in order to look up whether it performs as a reasonable person would assume? You'd spend more time on google than using anything you've bought (aside from the computer) just to find out if the lights, buttons, battery life, gas gauge, oil pressure, and all that work like one would expect.

And that's somehow better than the manufacturer building it correctly in the first place?

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[karnal]

But you DO have an idiot light... ahem valve stem cap that tells you they're getting lower than you'd like. It's not on the dash, but you pay attention and remedy the situation.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

Yeh, it's an idiot light *I* chose to add, at a level *I* selected when I bought it, that *supplements* a gauge. And it's only an idiot light because it would cost about fifty bucks per wheel to have a ruggedized analogue gauge on each tire all the time, while Microsoft starts out with one and deliberately throws most of the information away.

Throwing useful diagnostic information away is a huge problem in modern software, and Microsoft is particularly bad about it. They even throw away information that their software needs to correctly report errors. I've had Office tell me that a disk was full when a network connection went down, that I was having permission problems when a disk was full, and that a file might damaged when I simply didn't have permission to read it, all because each level of the stack threw away the actual error information and the next level up had to guess.

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[argent]

You'd spend more time on google than using anything you've bought (aside from the computer) just to find out if the lights, buttons, battery life, gas gauge, oil pressure, and all that work like one would expect.

Only when they *don't* work as you expect, because:

1. Your expectations are in error, or
2. There's a systematic problem that needs to be dealt with.

For example, if Microsoft is using the *rated* maximum capacity instead of the *measured* maximum capacity of the battery, as some people have alleged, providing a gauge would make that obvious. Alternatively, if battery manufacturers are overstating the rated capacity of the battery, or (like ink manufacturers) recommending a more profitable "replacement" level than is appropriate, THAT would come out.

On the other hand, if people's expectations are wrong, that would come out, people's expectations would adjust, as they have adjusted to the inflated battery life claims that laptop manufacturers are wont to make (yes, our laptop goes seven hours on a charge [with screen turned to minimum, running the screen saver, at an ambient temperature of precisely 28C]).

Re:We need more honestly dumb software.

[arikol]

yeah, having a way of getting a more detailed explanation may be good, but maybe not necessary.
Tech savvy and chemistry savvy are two very different things..

Re:In other news, Republicans report ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is true, otherwise Jews wouldn't vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Quick Battery Death

[God of Lemmings]

It's not a bug.... Its a feature!

Me thinks...

[someyob]

Me thinks thou dost protest too much.

Seems sensible

[arikol]

The new OS has features which the old one didn't and now does more to inform the user about the computers state in an understandable manner.

Apple did something similar (I think it was with OS X Leopard) where suddenly lots of people got a "this battery needs servicing" type message. This was only due to Apple realizing the need for this feature to give real recommendations. Who knows at what health percentage a battery should be replaced?

Sounds like the windows team realized the same thing and decided to support the user in his decision making. That's great. No conspiracy needed.

Re:Seems sensible

[anss123]

I think it was with OS X Leopard

It was on "Snow Leopard" and cost Apple a few warranty replacements, props to them for that I'd say.

Re:Seems sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

And it never occurred to anyone at MS that upgrading customers just *might* like to know about this new feature?

Whether they are killing batteries (or babies) or not, this attitude shows the contempt in which they hold their customers.

Batteries and their lifespan

[yoshi_mon]

Over the years as my number of rechargeable battery items have gone way up I'd like to think I'm somewhat familiar with the tech behind them. At the very least enough to use them well and do some basic troubleshooting when problems arise with them. And one of the main things I've observed lately is that sometimes it's the battery chargers that are ultimately the issue when problems start to become reoccurring.

I've had a 3 set cordless phone setup for about 5 years now and when they started to act up I got them all new batteries. Given that they had still been using the originals I figured ok problem solved. However not too long after using them with their new batteries they started to act up again. And it was a bit harder because the pattern was very hard to see.

While I'm sure that the original batteries were due for replacement the satellite chargers had stopped working properly. While the phones normally would stay in their normal charger that was not always the case which what threw me off at 1st. But I noticed that as long as I charged a phone in the main station it would work fine.

However the damage had been done and even my new batteries are not nearly as good as they should be. Extend what happened in my story to say a laptop where it's built in battery charging system has stopped working properly. Not only is the battery not getting a good charge it's likely being damaged in the process. Leading to Win7 telling people so even thou they think, "But I just got this thing a new battery!"

Re:Batteries and their lifespan

[ashridah]

I suspect, in your case, the phones were using their own weight to press against the charging pins? I've seen cases where the contact plate corrodes over time, and it becomes more difficult for it to contact and charge properly (logitech mouse bit me with that one)

I find something that's pressed against it using a spring/catch works better (which is the case for laptops) so i'm not sure i'd be willing to compare the two situations.

Re:Batteries and their lifespan

[yoshi_mon]

Oh trust me that was the 1st thing I checked, the contacts were never an issue. I know that often when dealing with people who run into issues like this they can fail to check the simple things but...well I'm not a total noob. (I've warn out my share of erasers on electrical work rather than paper.)

No, while I only relayed that one story for an examples sake it has not been my only experience with failing/malfunctioning chargers that end up killing batteries. I've also seen it in power tool chargers and I have suspected some laptops as well.

Re:Batteries and their lifespan

[Insightfill]

And one of the main things I've observed lately is that sometimes it's the battery chargers that are ultimately the issue when problems start to become reoccurring.

Good article here on how to build your own smarter battery charger. They guy who put the article together recounts how his power tool batteries kept going bad. In passing he mentions that the charger that comes with many batteries isn't always compatible with the batteries, or that they sometimes are just badly designed.

My rule of thumb - if the batteries are charged and plugged in, but still warm hours later, something's going wrong.

Re:Batteries and their lifespan

[yoshi_mon]

That...is really cool. Thank you.

Of course it's not

[kurt555gs]

Microsoft would prolly claims that Windows 7 isn't killing kittens or puppies either, but we know the truth!

Re:Of course it's not

[gad_zuki!]

With faster porn rendering and easier adult searching with bing, lets just say there are a lot less kittens in the world. Windows 7 - it was my idea.

Re:Of course it's not

[SittingUnderBridge]

How is this not a troll and yet it gets modded insightful? Truly shameful, glaring abuse of the moderation system.

Re:Not news - just like last time - wrong

[Locutus]

no, this is Microsoft adding something to the system which wasn't there and instead of letting users know this, they use a new notification telling them to go spend money and be afraid their computer might suddenly stop working. Because so many Windows users have a minute amount of general computer education, they panic and blame this on this new operating system. If Microsoft lets the user right-click on the battery icon, see/set the threshold warning settings and has help info on this then it is not so much their fault. But if none of that is there, it is 100% their fault people are fearful of their system and blaming it on Microsoft. IMO.

LoB

It is not a bug, it is a feature

[WillAffleckUW]

And causing you to go through longer lines at airport security and not working - well, you need to slow down your life, and Microsoft is just there to help you do that.

Now, go outside, the sun is shining and you shouldn't be indoors coding ...

maybe this is a GOOD thing?

[v1]

It's possible that Windows is just getting better at reporting battery condition and catching failing batteries, and so the problem that has already existed for awhile is just now becoming more noticeable? Windows PC grade hardware can be any level of quality, just because Windows is identifying your battery has crapped out before it should doesn't make it MS's fault. Maybe you just bought crap or need a new battery?

Oh really...?

[YankDownUnder]

Strange that. I just have hardware issues, then. Because if on my Compaq C731TU running Windows 7, I get SQUAT for battery life, however, when I swap out the HD for my Fedora drive (oh yeah, exact same drive, too) and work with that, I have this amazingly long battery life (nearly three hours). So something MUST be wrong with my hardware. Possibly if I read all the tripe that Microsoft will publish on this particular issue, I'll be able to convince myself that they're right, and reality is wrong. OH wait, they do that anyway! Far out. Glad to know I'm wrong, my hardware is wrong, my OS is wrong, and well, Microsoft is right. Gee, thanks Steve Ballmer! You've shown me the light, yet again!

Re:Oh really...?

[Legion303]

My anecdotal evidence nullifies yours. I have more battery life with Windows 7 than I did with XP, on the same hardware, with the same Rightmark CPU Clock power/speed settings.

sure ... just like Toyota

[Anonymous Coward]

(Most) people weren't complaining that Windows 7 said their battery needed to be replaced when it didn't, they were complaining that their battery didn't need to be replaced before they operated it under Windows 7 and then their battery abruptly did need to be replaced once they started operating it under Windows 7.

So the MSDN team hasn't said anything contradicting the bug reports and hasn't (apparently) done the only thing that can identify whether the bug reports were or were not valid -- distribute a tool for use under Windows XP and Windows Vista to capture data on whether or not the battery needs replacement so that the pre-Windows 7 condition of the battery could be compared with the post-Windows 7 condition.

It's as if Toyota had issued a response to people's claims of sudden over-acceleration (almost none of the complaints alleged that Toyotas were accelerating from a standstill on their own) saying: "We've confirmed that in every case where the vehicle accelerated the operator's foot was pressing on the accelerator at the time the acceleration began so there is no fault." Well, duh, that wasn't the complaint.

Heisenberg Battery Uncertainty Principle

[ipX]

The more certain you are that your Windows 7 laptop battery is in need of replacement, the less certain Microsoft can be about Windows 7 being the cause.

Verification?

[hmmdar]

Is there any other trusted third party software that can be used to verify what Microsoft is saying?

My Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Some time ago, I had an interesting experience. My computer reported a failure. I went out and replaced the module, but I really think the problem was in the operating system. You tell me. Here's the error message: "Sorry to interrupt the festivities, Dave, but I think we've got a problem. MY F.P.C. shows an impending failure of the antenna orientation unit. The A.O. unit should be replaced within the next seventy-two hours."

-Dave

"Collective ecosystem"?

[ozbird]

"You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes..."

MS just hired the NRA's PR firm

[xactuary]

Windows 7 doesn't kill batteries. People kill batteries.

Just Remember...

[cmacb]

Windows doesn't use batteries, people do.

Just shut down those Windows laptops and leave 'em that way. Problem solved.

Fear not, the Collective hath spoken

[niteshifter]

To the very best of the collective's knowledge

There, fixed that for 'em.

Sorry, couldn't resist the opportunity for snark. "collective ecosystem knowledge". What the hell is that? Pure noise, bereft of signal is what that is. Some days I really mourn the death of literacy. This be one of those days.

of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course since its M$ saying this, then the exact opposite of what they say is true!

The Borg have spoken...

[number6x]

"To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, ..."

The collective has spoked.

Your battery has been assimilated to power the collective.

Don't buy it.

[balbord]

My Asus A6VA had ~2 hours of battery with win 2003 Server or XP. Two months after I installed Win 7 all I get is roughly 20~30 minutes.
Bastards!

Re:Don't buy it.

[godefroi]

Need... more... objective... data...

Sorry, your "feelings" and "roughly" can't be trusted. How do we know that your usage patterns didn't change? How do we know that you didn't install folding@home? How do we know that you didn't have a brain-dead video driver for 7 that kept your card in a high-power mode?

In other words, do you have any hard data?

Telltale crumbs

[chicago_scott]

"To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge..."

Any statement that begins like that is surely BS.

Re:Telltale crumbs

[godefroi]

True. Postings by random people on slashdot are much more trustworthy.

Re:Yes, But Late

[dragonturtle69]

Yes, I've seen the warnings (pop up from systray, logged in the Windows System or Application event logs), and when they are shown, it means the disk is about done, as in replace it now. Not nearly the same as seeing one HDD with double the errors of similar HDDs (hours of usage and model) by proactively polling them.

Batteries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scince I installed Windows 7 on my Acer, it refuses to charge my batteries. Acer says that it's a Windows 7 problem, Microsoft says it is not a Windows 7 problem. I have installed all drivers. Acer then says I should not install Windows 7 because it is not what the laptop came with. .... Grah.

similar story with lost and found.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where the cloud and always on connections come in. Those alerts trigger an automatic backup to Mozy for example. A "OMG my data is lost!" goes to "well that's just inconvenient".

Re:In other news, Republicans report ....

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Republicans report that their party is not controlled by Jews

Don't let that theory stop you from accusing us of being anti-semetic...

Re:It would have been a story if...

[zippthorne]

Lithiums will last a *long* time though on very little maintenance current, or even no maintenance current. The thing that usually kills lithiums is the *cycle* life, and cells in a warehouse aren't getting cycled.

Next you will blame MS for sodomising...

[Anonymous Coward]

your grandma. Getting your buddies or yourself under different accounts to mod yourself up? The truth is you are nothing but a stinking troll.

What is a prolly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Something a troll does?

Well, to be fair...

[vegiVamp]

Falling off the Burj Dubai doesn't kill you, either. You might experience difficulties landing, though.

I don't think so

[kuei12]

Microsoft is in bed with hardware manufacturers to force customers to upgrade their computers. So, why would we believe this is not a deliberate attempt by microsoft to force people to change their batteries?

Read the article knuckleheads.

[Chicken04GTO]

All windows 7 is doing is reading battery controller provided information on itself. If the battery drops below 40% of capacity, windows reports it. The idea of Windows 7 damaging your batteries is absurd.

Since I know none of you will read the article, because it might get in the way of your circle jerk windows bashing:

"PC batteries expose information about battery capacity and health through the system firmware (or BIOS). There is a detailed specification for the firmware interface (ACPI), but at the most basic level, the hardware platform and firmware provide a number of read-only fields that describe the battery and its status. The firmware provides information on the battery including manufacturer, serial number, design capacity and last full charge capacity. The last two pieces of information--design capacity and last full charge capacity--are the information Windows 7 uses to determine how much the battery has naturally degraded. This information is read-only and there is no way for Windows 7 or any other OS to write, set or configure battery status information. In fact all of the battery actions of charging and discharging are completely controlled by the battery hardware. Windows only reports the battery information it reads from the system firmware. Some reports erroneously claimed Windows was modifying this information, which is definitely not possible."

Vista?

[Vegeta99]

Did Vista ever report battery issues? I don't believe it did, as my Ubuntu installation has always told me my battery was shot, the Windows partition, come to think of it, didn't until just recently. It must have been when I upgraded to 7!

Maybe all these people whining about their batteries being shot just upgraded?

excellent doublespeak

[Anonymous Coward]

"To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge"

They're really trying to sound like an open source project with a community around them. In reality, "collective ecosystem knowledge" is just the knowledge of the two Microsoft employees that wrote the code.

- AC

is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?

Compare 3 OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have any problem with how Windows 7 reports battery charge or whether it charges it. I have three OS each telling me Windows is doing good there. The problem is, Windows 7 is sucking up energy like crazy compared to the two other OS when I start running the CPU and GPU at maximum. By crazy I mean that even when the laptop is plugged the charger can't recharge the battery as fast as it is used. If I start with 99%, after one hour of run time I am down to 92% (when I am plugged, because when I am unplugged it doesn't last one hour under windows).

Re:It would have been a story if...

[Dan Ost]

That's not strictly true. Lithium Ion cells lose capacity with age regardless of whether they're being used or not. How fast a cell degrades with age depends on its charge level and temperature.

So the total capacity reduction of the cell is a combination of wear and tear from cycling it and its age.

Cricket

[Anonymous Coward]

The most of the users complaining aren't seeing a minor battery issue they are going from being able to constantly use their machine on battery power for 2.5-3 hours on xp/vista, then going directly to 5-15 minutes within a week or two using 7..its not a slow or minor issue, it's sudden and drastic.

Translation: MS bashers have to make stuff up

[symbolset]

Because there's nothing real to complain about.