Windows 7 worse on netbook battery life than XP

hadmad

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Hardware drivers and how they interact with an operating system are key for battery drain. For instance, a driver that fails to let Windows turn off a Wi-Fi chip when users aren't surfing the Web could accidently result in poor battery life. Same with a graphics driver that isn't able to shift processing work from an overtaxed CPU to a fresh GPU.

Be patient, says analyst
Jack Gold, an independent research analyst, says that it's still too early to condemn Windows 7. "[With release candidates,] Microsoft often has debug code inserted to find and document problems, and the code is not optimized," Gold said. "Same is true of the preliminary drivers available."

Drivers are not written by Microsoft, but by the component makers themselves, he said. Rather than simply recycling their Vista drivers, the hardware vendors need the final release of Windows 7, which only arrived last month, and "a little time to perform their magic."

While existing Windows XP netbooks may miss out on some of these optimizations, future models that ship with Windows 7 pre-installed may eventually have the same or longer battery life than XP that Microsoft has promised.

"It does not trouble me that current machines have less than optimum battery life, or performance for that matter. With all the resources Windows 7 will use on a device, optimization will take a little while to complete," Gold said.
 
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