Since I have a Toshiba NB205 netbook, I’ve been getting hammered with emails since last night. Why? Because folks are reading a LAPTOP Magazine article that discusses the impacts of battery life that Windows 7 brings. In particular, they see that LAPTOP’s Toshiba NB205 runs for 9 hours and 24 minutes under Windows XP, but only for 6 hours and 15 minutes with Windows 7. LAPTOP updated the drivers on the NB205 running Windows 7 and managed to get a little more battery life — 6 hours and 53 minutes in that test scenario.
Let me first say that LAPTOP is asking a valid question and they’re raising an appropriate concern. Whether Windows 7 hurt or help battery life on notebooks and netbooks is something that most folks would want to know. But drawing a conclusion at this point is premature in my opinion, because there’s another key factor needed for an “apples to apples” test, and as far as I know, it’s not yet available. I’m talking about the Toshiba Power Saver utility, which is a huge contributor to the Toshiba’s excellent runtime in Windows XP and can vary the device performance as well.
The hardware under the hood of the NB205 isn’t radically different from most other netbooks on the market, so there’s no magical qualities that make it run for 8-9 hours with the high-capacity, 6-cell battery. Near as I can tell, Toshiba has optimized its power-saving utility — and possibly other software — to match up well with the hardware. I’m sure there are various optimizations and other factors as well, but my point is that the Power Saver utility isn’t officially available for Windows Vista or Windows 7. A quick search of the Toshiba download page for the NB205 shows an XP-only version. And trust me, I’ve been watching for the software ever since I put Windows 7 on the netbook.
I tried to install the XP version on Windows 7 right away, but didn’t have any luck. Even if I did have success — who’s to say that a utility for XP would run just as well on an operating system it’s not designed for? And if Toshiba provided a beta utility to the LAPTOP folks — again, there’s no mention of any such utility in use during the test — it’s likely just a beta. The other two mainstream notebooks tested — a Gateway NV5807u and a Dell Studio XPS 16 — may or many not have specific power management utilities from their manufacturer. I simply don’t know. But neither system was reported to take a huge battery hit with Windows 7, so my educated guess is that neither has a very aggressive power management utility to begin with, i.e., runtime on those mobile devices didn’t vary much between XP and Windows 7.
I still believe that LAPTOP is asking the right question. And most of the “Windows 7 is bad for netbook battery life” conclusions I’m hearing are actually being drawn more by readers of the article than the article itself. In fact, LAPTOP correctly points out that by October, drivers might be better optimized and battery life might be unaffected as a result. Unfortunately, many people are missing that point, so let me reiterate it.
Until all of the Toshiba NB205 drivers and utilities are finalized for use under Windows 7, the right answer to battery life question on this particular netbook can’t be had just yet.
At the moment, I am seeing less battery life on my netbook with Windows 7 than with XP. I can’t get into exact numbers as I haven’t run a controlled test under each operating system. Instead, I’ve been using the netbook as my primary computer since Aug. 6th of this month. If I had to guess, I’d say that instead of the eight hours I see under XP, I’m seeing between 5.5 and 6 under Windows 7.
For those who wrote me or sent me a Twitter DM, I hope this answers your question from my point of view. Again, I’m not bashing LAPTOP for their article — it’s a good article and is meant as an observation from which you can draw a partial conclusion if you want to. I don’t need to draw the conclusion because I’m personally witnessing the lower battery life on the netbook. But I also understand that there are certain outstanding test conditions waiting to be met, so I’m waiting until October to draw my final conclusion.


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