The venerable 2001 classic of an OS,
Windows XP, strikes again. The scribes over at
Laptop have put together a rather damning battery life comparison between old greybeard and the fresh Windows 7, which finds that on average netbooks get 47 minutes less battery life with the upgraded software. In the case of the ASUS 1008HA, that deficit was a meaty 57 minutes, or 16.7%.
Liliputing and
jkOnTheRun have run their own tests which invariably reached the same conclusion. Adding these data to an earlier
comparison with Snow Leopard, where Windows 7 was again markedly worse than its competitor, leads us to the conclusion that perhaps Microsoft's 7th heaven hasn't quite been optimized for the mobile mavens out there... yet.
Read - Stick with XP? Windows 7 Battery Life Worse on Netbooks
Read - Windows 7 + netbooks = lower battery life?
Read - Netbook Battery Tests: Windows XP vs Windows 7
posted November 12th 2009 3:51AM
As much as I like longer battery life, I'd rather hit myself repeatedly in the testicles with a lump hammer than use Windows XP. As noted in the article, this is an OS first released in 2001 and boy-heck does it feel like it today. Move on and rapidly...
My Texas Instruments calculator lasts years
But does it play Crysis?
(sorry, couldn't resist) :p
Are any of these tests making it fair by disabling the them in windows 7? Since that would lower battery life due to the hardware having to work more. If they dont then its not a fair comparison.
I thought Win 7 was all unicorns and fairy dust? How dare anyone malign the Apple haters savior!
Windows 7 is a definite improvement over Vista however on both of my laptops I still have XP on them because I don't see enough benefits in Windows 7 to bother doing a wipe and restore. And it always takes a few weeks to add everything back that you had on a machine and since XP has better battery life, I'm definitely not replacing XP on my netbook.
Sounds like a reasonable stand, but I find that already W7 is pushed so much that soon lots of things will come without XP drivers/compatibility.
But for now there's time.
I'd think twice about the netbook statement. A friend of mine just slapped Windows 7 on his Dell mini-9", and it's snappier than Ubuntu, and I would wager XP.
XP is dated, and I just can't use it anymore. It drives me nuts.
Searching "aero" in the first two articles returns nothing, and in the third article they identify that they left it on.
This is like comparing the fuel consumption of an idling car to a car driving at city speed. If you are really looking for battery life, a semi-intelligent person would turn Aero off. Now I'm questioning if they even used the same power level configuration. (CPU speed, screen brightness, stop the hard drive after 5 minutes of inactivity, etc.)
I think there are too many hidden variables to truly test the power management in 7 vs. XP by running certain focussed tests.
7 has way more power management options built in....it's kind of like testing 2 identically built cars gas mileage by just driving them both until their gas runs out and totally ignoring the fact that one of them has 10 different 'gas saving' modes.
Maybe noone else out their messes with their power mode settings, but I do and I know for a fact that I get more juice on 7 vs. XP.
The trick is setting max power saving where possible while on battery, of course. Most tests ignore the subtleties of the PM options in 7.
A REAL test would be 2 identical netbooks, one with XP and one with 7 - running a fresh install of each OS with all updates and newest drivers. Then setting up Power Management to run the longest without turning off/shutting down and recording those results.
WTF Engadget! How about mentioning that the first two tests don't say what powersaving settings they used and the third doesn't use any at all. How are these results worth looking at if they don't even say if they use the supposedly good powersaving features of win7?
Someone looking for traffic: Hey look in power hog mode (or undocumented mode) win7 uses more power than XP
Informed person: No shit! Win7 has additional graphical overhead and background programs that should be scaled back or turned off if you actually use the powersaving settings
Engadget: Oh, we guess Win7 isn't optimized for mobile applications
I watched the CPU usage go from 75-90% when playing flash video in XP on a mobile Pentium M 1.7 down to 15-30% in Win7, but hey, no one watches Hulu on one of these things....
Sorry, not sure exactly how I did that :/
I was going to say that it's not unheard of for Engadget to go along with stacked 'results' in favor of OSX. Every blog despite what it's contributors claim, prefer an OS. It's normal, it's human. Most of us look for ways (perhaps even subconsciously) to determine or justify that the things we like or prefer are 'better' than the alternative in some way. People don't seem to remember that this is a blog, it's not news. And so, obviously there are times when there's an opinionistic or snarky flair in certain articles regarding certain companies. It simply reflects how the writer feels.
Journalistic integrity aside, real information isn't always the priority, not to say that it isn't important...it's just that sometimes page hits rank way up there as well so certain articles are meant to push buttons or incite lots of activity (comments) vs. provide unbiased, factual information.
Engadget's kind of like Fox News in that aspect. But we love it anyway because it's very entertaining and does give us the heads up on gadgets and electronic tidbits. I see it all the time in the reviews done, especially in many of the Windows or Mas OS articles, or Apple and Microsoft related news - and that's where it's to be expected. I can't really name a blog that I've found totally objective or impartial - they all tend to lean one way or the other, especially when it comes to Windows, OSX and Linux information.
I agree with you totally and wanted to add that there are also power management features that these tests don't use - which make the results pretty sketchy as well. I don't know if 7 would get MORE battery time, but I highly doubt that with power management features activated, it would get so much less battery time than XP.
Unfortunately, most of the comments concern themselves with saying nobody cares about battery life on notebooks, or you can get your work done faster so who needs a long lasting battery... rather than concerning themselves with test methodology as you're doing.
I think a more rigorous test would be totally lost on the people I see commenting on this article...
I don't understand this obsession with comparing Windows 7 (released in October 2009) to Windows XP (released in October 2001). Seriously? Comparing 8 year old operating systems to current operating systems? Seriously?
Okay, eliminate battery life as a "feature" then from your decision making. Aren't there enough other security and stability benefits to justify the switch to 7? I find it laughable that these comparisons have been coming up repeatedly since the public beta of 7 started and bloggers continue to write this as if it were something earth shattering. Hey guys, would you ever try comparing Mac OS 10.6.2 (released in August 2009) to the Mac OS that was released 8 years prior? Mac OS 10.0 was released in March 2001. 8 years ago! How about comparing 10.6.2 battery life to 10.0? Oh, that's right. You can't. That was back in the old PowerPC chip days. Please! Enough with these stupid comparisons. You guys do this just for HITS and HEADLINES! Stop being a headline/hit whore and actually post something worth reading.
I find it laughable that you find a criticism of *one* part of Win7 and then get all butt-hurt as if people are saying DON'T BUY IT THE BATTERY LIFE IS CRAP. Are you not capable of understanding constructive criticism? Can I not say I like my iPhone, yet I wish the battery life was better in one sentence?
Geez, lighten up, francis. Windows 7 has been very well received in pretty much everything except battery life. Do I need to go on and say more positive things about it to make you feel better?
Considerring the amount of new features you get from an improved new OS and merely a 16.7% loss of battery time? I would say it's a very good deal for a new generation of OS.
Would you compare a Fairlady Z to an AE86 and complain the fairlady has worse mpg?
One of the main goals of a laptop is low power consumption. Sorry, but battery life should be better on a modern OS than on an ancient one.
Give me a break, Engadget
Excellent comment. The text exudes invitations to mindlessly vote this down.
Way to take a stand on apathy.
I'm not an expert and will not claim to be but I've run various systems for more than 20 years. Win7 has been great on my Toshiba laptop. The system is only about 5 months old and I did the Vista to Win7 upgrade last week and so far everywhere on the system I've seen improvements. The real world results have been surprising and how fast that it runs everything is amazing. I did love XP and Win7 feels like a natural advancement so I am surprised that Win7 didn't do as well on the netbooks. I'm sure that MS can get the code running better to save some power, probably by limiting the gadgets or something that runs in the background. I would imagine that there are enough things like that running that can be shut down as a default but who knows like I said I'm not an expert.
Turn off glass and the other eye candy and battery life is much longer in my experience on both a Mini 110 and 311.
I have a feeling with some of the people who are putting down Win7 they don't want to buy or can't afford the new operating system. What they do is put win 7 down and hope everyone else agrees, so they don't feel so bad keeping windows XP for another 25 years. Sorry guys but your living in the past.
Now you're saying people are hating on Windows 7 because they can't afford it? Sheesh, who are you kidding. Most people on Engadget won't be paying for it anyway. The fact that you like MMA says a hell of a lot about you, haha.
It's a question of efficiency. Is 7 as efficient as it can/should be?
The problem with these tests is that they were done using BatteryEater - they were not real world tests
Most stress-test programs can't/won't take into account the various efficiency processes and services with an OS would offer - they are designed to stress the system, not provide a comparison of battery life
Doing real-world tests, like running videos, games and office programs would show a better result - they would all in some way use OS features and would provide an overall fairer comparison
For example, running the same version of Word/Writer with a large document open would be a better indicator of battery life
eg Win 7 might be better at saving power in an Office Situation
Another test could be to run a saved replay on Supreme Commander (taxing graphically, with games going on for hours) on both versions of Windows while also noting the FPS at intervals - although this might not be entirely fair due to different directX versions (9 vs 10/11)
eg Win XP might be better Battery wise, but 7 might have a higher average FPS
Yeah this is for sure. Both Vista and 7 cannot come up to XP in battery frugality in any machine. This includes regular laptops even those optimized for power savings like ultraportables. Every time they release a new OS they "blah blah blah" about all these power saving features and better power management but every time the actual power consumption goes up.
I wish they would stop marketing out of their asses.
Anyone who thinks XP is more functional than Windows 7 has clearly not seen the XP integration in professional. There is nothing XP can do that Win7 can't.
I'm sure battery life being higher on XP has to do with different themes or search indexing running. I, for one, sacrifice battery life for a better looking computer, but that's because I like pretty stuff ^^
Am I to assume that this reply section is mostly for people who, having installed Windows 7 (thinking maybe that 'it's MINE so I need to DEFEND it') are mostly trying to defend the fact that it uses more power than the old Windows even before you start using compositing?
Of course, Engadget is Primarily a US site, and people (though not the White House, or Steve Ballmer - who prefer open source) in the US where support for Microsoft is practically a state religion. (Just as I hear Americans saying that American cars are also the best).
Isn't the whole point of a netbook to RUN applications and have a better battery life? It seems that people here don't want netbooks, they want laptops with more power and bigger batteries - am I wrong?
It's because bloat sucks power from the netbook.
If you want less battery life, Windows 7 is for you.
I have a white macbook (early 2009) that I recently installed Windows 7 on using boot camp. The battery life when I am running snow leopard is much better than when running windows 7. For example, at full charge in snow leopard I will have estimated battery life of 5 or 6 hours with the screen brightness turned down but with wifi enabled, but in Windows I will get estimated battery life of less than 3 hours with the screen brightness turned down.
@sdorn
I installed 7 a while back on my mac pro, as well. W7 usually eats up my battery in about 3 hours. Snow leopard is by far easier on my battery, usually giving me 4 hours at least. Keep in mind this is after 160 load cycles.
I have a Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard and Windows 7 installed. Under SL, I routinely get 5 or so hours of use on a charge. On Windows 7, I get around 2:45-3 hrs. Don't know what's different, but that's what I've noticed.
So to sum up: XP is superior due to its time on the market, and therefore wide band of supported applications, and it's generally simple background. Windows 7 has improvements which may be detremental at times but are unavoidably more advanced than it's "experienced" counterpart.
And, as usual, I run UNIX on a mac and experience regular improvements. Get your mac cannons ready.