Vista vs XP - Battery lastage difference?

I am considering buying windows xp for my arriving xps 1330. Does anyone know how serious the battery lastage difference is? Obviously Vista uses the battery life up faster, but by how much?

 

Other way around.

 

really? interesting.... good to know.

 

Seriously? I have read on multiple threads that vista consumes more battery power than XP. And it seems logical, too, because vista uses the graphics card a lot more due to its aero interface/effects. Are you sure?

 

I'd say Vista probably uses the least amount of power on newer notebooks like the M1330 and i1520 as it can natively take advantage of all of the power saving feature of your computer's hardware.

For instance, Vista can adjust display brightness, video card power draw, and USB device power draw; to name a few. XP doesn't control these devices and leaves that solely up to the mish mash of drivers...

Vista also knows when you're on battery power and scales down its video card draw...

 

Hmm, I wonder if there are any tests on this. Because like I said, people wrote the opposite.

 

Display brightness on battery is something you can change in the BIOS settings or in Quickset. Regarding the video card, the regular nvidia drivers have power optimisation options enabled by default.

Unless you can point out evidence that having the OS be in charge of these things instead of the manufacturer's drivers has any impact on power draw, then I'll just assume it's just a theoretical guess .. especially when you take in account the fact that Vista uses considerably more graphics-processing resources in general.

 

Same here. Now I'm confused

 

For me XP consumes far less power than Vista. Tests done on Inspiron 6400/1505 with 9 cell battery, WiFi and BlueTooth OFF, display at minimum, CPU speed (Merom 7200, 2Ghz) locked at 1 Ghz, maximum battery life in ATI PowerPlay (Mobility X1400).
In Windows XP MC I get over 5 hours of office use, in Vista Ultimate around 3 and a half hours. Also in Vista the fan runs all the time compared to XP where it starts and stops. The laptop is warmer in Vista compared to XP.
Don't get me wrong, I like Vista, it is a step up compared to XP, but I don't think is that great for laptops if you often use it on battery. If you mostly use it pluged in, then I would go with Vista.
I am sticking with XP for now, maybe SP1 for Vista will change things, but I doubt we will see any improvements in power management and battery life.

 

Yes, vista runs far more processes, keeping the CPU busy a lot more than XP.

 

im currently on a hp dv9000 (getting a new one soon) Dual-boot vista and xp and i get ~45 more mins with vista easily, Vista added allot of new laptop power options that are not in xp, at first xp lasted longer, but then I actually set-up the pwoer profile in vista and easily got, like I said, 45 more mins then I did in XP.

 

I have currently installed windows xp pro on my new 1330 and i noticed that the battery indicator shows less time :S will have to test it on the practice.... if this is actually true it would suck because i really need long battery duration and the trade of XP PRO for Vista Home is bad

 

Hmm...all these condradictory statements!

I will do a power test with vista/xp myself when I receive mine. It shipped yesterday and *should* be here by oct.8

 

Lastage????????????????

 

lol I was thinking the same thing

 

Both from CNET:

"Windows Vista eats laptop batteries for lunch", source
"We saw a small drop in battery life on the Dell going from XP to Vista", source

 

On my dual boot XP and Vista M1330, I have noticed that XP consistently gets about 30 minutes less than Vista does. Why? I do not know, I certainly was not expecting XP to have worse battery life, but it does.

 

Vista inherently has better power management features than XP. However, on my other toshiba laptop I noticed little battery life difference between XP and Vista (upgrade) because toshiba laptops, to my knowledge, come bundled with a power profile/management system similar to the one in vista.

 

There is not much difference in battery duration when in Vista or XP. There's only a 5 minutes difference from each OS on my notebook.

 

Yes, I know there are seperate utilities to facilitate this in XP...

Vista features like SmartDimm (lowers the display brightness after inactivity on battery) are a few reasons why having the OS aware can be useful...

When it comes to the OS doing the graphics card over the native drivers... I'd vote it can communicate its power needs to the graphics card better. The Manufacturer's drivers can only guess and then will adjust its needs accordingly...

I haven't ran XP on my i1520 though so i can't say... And I have no plans to install it to test... Not needed...

 

Do they specify if Aero is on or off, on my laptop when i used vista and was getting more duration i had Aero off, and the classic theme if that counts (no transparencies,...)

 

Isn't Smartdimmer an Nvidia feature?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_powermizer.html

• NVIDIA SmartDimmer™ technology for intelligent, granular display brightness control for maximum battery life.

While the Smartdimmer menu is unavailable in XP, there are apparently ways to enable it (I'm looking into it at the moment)

You might want to read the rest of that link to see what other power-saving features the nvidia drivers support, such as:

• Adaptive clocking and engine gating ensure the GPU is only consuming as much power as is necessary for the task at hand
• ASLM (Active State Link Management) technology for ultra efficient use of the PCI Express link
• Uncompromised power management support for MXM-based notebooks

Any power-management communication by Vista would be generic at best. Windows wouldn't know about any advanced power management features of the card, which is the job of the driver.

I think I've already proved that it can do more than "only guess", taking into account the link I posted above (especially the part about the PCI Express Link).

Still waiting for proof that any of what you say is actually true