Win 7: netbook battery killer?
The Toshiba NB205 dropped a whopping three hours battery life when running Windows 7 - although this is likely a driver, rather than OS, issue.
In a test carried out by Laptop Magazine, laptops and netbooks were given both Windows XP Service Pack 3 and the latest build of Windows 7 in order to compare performance between the two. While the laptops were almost unaffected by the change, the same couldn't be said for the netbooks.
One of the devices on test - a Toshiba NB205 - was capable of running the battery benchmark test for an impressive 9 hours 25 minutes under Windows XP, but this dropped by over three hours to 6 hours 15 minutes once Windows 7 was installed. An upgrade to the drivers available from Toshiba clawed back half an hour, but the result was still heavily in favour of Windows XP.
Another netbook, the MSI U123, told a similar tale: with 8 hours and 14 minutes of available runtime in XP, a move to Windows 7 dropped it to 7 hours and 41 minutes. While this represents far less of a dramatic drop than the Toshiba suffered, it is still likely to disappoint anyone looking forward to the next generation of Windows 7-based netbooks.
The blame is unlikely to fall entirely at the feet of Microsoft's latest operating system, however: a lack of mature drivers for much of the hardware in the netbooks is more likely responsible for the dramatic drop in battery life in the Toshiba, as evidenced by the half-hour increase seen once newer drivers were installed. As we approach the official launch date of Windows 7 - and certainly as manufacturers prepare netbooks with the operating system pre-installed - we should see the quality of drivers improving, with the battery life reaching the dizzy heights that were attainable under Windows XP.
There's more good news if you're still looking forward to Windows 7's release: despite the loss of battery life, the test revealed a noticeable increase in hard drive performance and the time applications took to open under the new operating system.
Do you think that Windows 7 will be the operating system that saves the netbook market or kills it? Will you be upgrading your portable systems when the official release rolls around? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyWindows 7: the OS of the drinking man!
On that particular netbook, others don't have as big a battery or battery life, my netbook lasts 5-6 hours a 30-40% drop in that is going to see its portability significantly reduced.
All that said Win7 is likely to be fixed by the netbook makers whereas I see a similar drop in battery life by running Ubuntu on my netbook and I doubt anyones going to fix that for sometime, I choose to run it as generally it makes the pants Atom platform perform a bit better.
Buying a netbook was probably the worst hardware choice I've ever made, people bang on about low power use etc. but my eeepc 1000H uses the same ~1250mA/h in Xp as my core2duo notebook does in powersave mode and the notebook with a bigger screen and more grunt despite lower CPU speed is much more useful.
I have 7 on pre-order and am hoping that it can provide the multitasking performance of Ubuntu to my netbook along with the powersaving abilities of XP, guess only time will tell.
I don't believe anyone uses their netbook for a full days work completely mobile. If they do, then they will have gone for a 6 cell option and power adapters in car.
I have noticed when I am mobile and sharing my internet connection on my htc touch it does use up the battery a lot quicker. Again, that might be early driver issues.
either way, win7 will be much better than XP. who still uses an OS without a native start menu search?
Why is it that people trot out bilge like this?
Let's analyse this in reverse order. Secure? I didn't have security issues on Windows 98, let alone 2000, and I don't on XP. It's difficult to see how a new system can reduce the level of security problems below zero.
Stable? The only thing that I have stability problems with is Firefox, darling of flower-dancing hippies everywhere. It's getting so bad I'm thinking of going back to Explorer. Yes, seriously.
And modern - oh, I can't wait to get my teeth into this one. You want to promote something merely on the basis that it's more recent than something else, even though it's demonstrably less good?
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Microsoft have released a new operating system! Ooh! It's obviously automatically better than anything they made before, even though it's clearly vastly worse, simply and solely because it's the latest release! Ooh! Ooh!
For pete's sake.
Never said you could.
I said security issues were already zero, which is quite hard to improve upon :)
Anyway, enough of this flaming.
* Heads off for lunch *
Wow, where to start! It's easy to say Windows 98 was secure when the amount of viruses etc. written wasn't even close to what it is today. I understand that you don't get viruses, neither do I, but we know how to use a computer and the internet in a safe way. The same can't be said for the other 90% of people out there. Next we have UAC, and now that it actually works how it should (unlike Vista), vastly improves the security of 7 over XP or anything before. Programs have also finally been denied access to the kernel. This caused allot of problems for anti-virus programs during the beta stages, but it's the right way to go in terms of overall security.
Next, we have what l3v1ch touched upon, the improved driver and overall stability of the OS compared with XP. Running Windows 7 at home and XP Pro in work has made me realise just how much better Windows 7 (and Vista) is. I'm not talking about blue screens here, I'm talking about how XP often get's bogged down whilst multitasking etc. (ok my home pc has better spec, but my work pc still has a dual core processor etc.). The way Vista and especially Windows 7 handles programs that stop responding is in another league to anything before. No longer do we have to wait 10mins+ till things are sorted out and the crashed program is closed, it's instantanious if we don't wish to wait and see if it'll sort itself out.
Also, modern in my opinion is important. Afterall I spend most of my day staring at an operating system, why not have it look nice, especially as in Windows 7 it's now more responsive and quicker than any other Microsoft OS before? I understood why people hated Vista, but with Windows 7 there really is no reason to bash it. It's faster, has propper 64bit support, prettier, more stable, quicker to boot etc. etc. than XP or 2000 ever were.
Sorry for the rant, but Rhodes dove in and insulted l3v1ch, and it appears without even trying Windows 7.
As for the original story, I'm sure things will be sorted by launch as drivers improve. But as wuyanxu pointed out, on such low powered devices (especially GPU) they may use more than XP does.
On my laptop I have the same problem. Windows 7 64-bit say 6 hours instead of 7 hours and half (Vista 64-bit) (wireless on, minimum brightness), as for some reason my CPU is supposed to go at 800MHz, but instead when on battery, it goes at 1500MHz minimum, but plug-in at "power saver" mode, it goes down to it's 800MHz, so plug-in uses less power then when on battery. The reason for this is that I dont' have my motherboard drivers installed, but rather using Windows default drivers. In fact, no mater what I do with the system, it won't increase battery life, as nothing actually goes under power saver mode when on battery, except for the GPU, and the GPU is the only drivers I could find (using Vista 64-bit drivers gave me BSOD's)
I much prefer 7 - quicker to boot and generally doing stuff. UAC is a lot less annoying.
Calm down, wait for retail release, give it 3-6 months to sort out driver issues that shouldn't occur but still do, THEN start blaming MS.
Thank you very much.
think it's probably like that on purpose.. lure in the choobies and then hook em lol turn it all off and then listen to them squeel like a pig
great love it!!!! :)
It was connected via bluetooth not USB. Still I'm happy with the performance regardless.