Windows Vista uses more notebook power?
This type of headline should give pause to any mobile computer user that plans to run Vista, but I’m still on the fence with my opinion. InfoWorld indicates that "Vista could sap notebook PC battery life", the thoughts being:
- Extra power is needed for more advanced processors, graphics cards and memory
- More resources in general are needed to run Vista
Let’s think about this for a second: while the Aero Glass feature requires greater resources (we already know you need some good graphics horsepower under the hood), Vista is definitely more than Aero Glass. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great feature and one I’ve tried to enable on every machine I’ve installed it on. I’ll also grant that Vista runs better with a higher end system, i.e.: one that has components requiring greater power.
From my personal experience however, I haven’t seen any distinct difference in my notebook or Tablet PC battery run-times using Vista over XP. (Note: this is based on systems not capable of running Aero Glass) In fact, I find the Vista power settings (shown) to be much more advanced than those in Windows XP. That may not mean greater power efficiency (nor less), but it’s a step in the right direction.
Like I said, I’m still on the fence with this whole argument. While I do more testing and gather my thoughts, give the article a read and chime in with your thoughts.
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Afro Glass? is that a new operational mode for Aero Glass I haven’t heard about yet? :)
No Afro Glass, please; I straighten my hair.
Afro Glass. When spell checker’s attack!
Ah yes….the newest secret feature of Vista that helps your hairstyle while you compute: Afro Glass. It’s amazing what one small mis-click in spell-check will do. Or should I call it “spell-cheek”? Thanks for the catch guys! :)
Without Aero it seems to me that Vista use less resources than XP. And I have not noticed any difference in my battery life in my eo v7110 using Vista. I have not read the article but does the author provide any numbers? If not, then that’s pure speculation.
While my time with Vista on the Fujitsu P1610 is relatively short I have not picked up on any noticeable battery drain compared to XP, and I am running Aero Glass all the time. It rockes on the P1610 with 1 GB of memory, and I haven’t started playing around with ReadyBoost, yet.
I installed windows XP Professional (not tablet) in my M400 centrino duo 1,8 for test, and was a huge difference. Much faster than the tablet pc windows version. The tablet pc version is much resource hunger that the standar version. Maybe we don’t see the difference becouse of that in ours tabletpcs. What do you think about this?
Gotta love the Vista FUD!
:P
Big difference for me, but I’m running RC1. Perhaps it’s better in the final product?
Previewing your Comment
I ran RC1 on my tc4200 and had just as good if not better battery life than I had with XP. Actually, I used it one evening in the kitchen then went to the living room to watch a TV show marathon and I had it on the whole time – a good 4 1/2 to 5+ hours. My XP time is usually about 3 1/2 to 4 hours.