Vista notebook killer?

Now that Vista RTM has been out for a while. how badly will it impact on notebook's battery life? is there any "battery mode"?

any comment of how vista will impact on notebook?

 

RC2 didn't do anything wonderful on my HP Zv6130, it went through my battery like it was going out of style. I could usually get 3 hours in XP, but in Vista I would be shutting down after an hour.

I think now Vista has a lot more of the power conservation software and drivers available. It will depend on manufacturer's efforts to get all the special drivers and hardware tweaks they used for XP moved to vista- in the meantime I am still not sold on it as a notebook OS!

 

i'm using the RTM... switching to "battery mode" (yes there is a profile manager, by default there are 3 items: performance, balanced, battery) it's as good as xp.. only few minutes different.. but aero is without transparency... after than this, it's pretty much the same, my acer 5672 keeps about 2 hours and 50 mins

 

so turning on aero just ate "few minutes" of battery life? so what's the fuss is all about? could it be that the aero ate a lot of battery life because of not sufficient amount of compatible Graphic Card driver is available?

 

no, when i switch to "battery life" Vista turn of the transparency (but aero is on). that's all. i didn't try to re-enable the transparency because i don't really care about it, and be on battery means i'm out for at least 1 hour and half, so i really need to save battery

anyway, there is a huge difference between RC1, RC2 and the RTM, RC1 was lasting no more than 1 hour, when RTM is as good as XP basically.

You can tune the profiles very deeply, so you can tune even more and save more battery than with XP (without extra software), including CPU speed, etc...

 

Good to hear that the RTM is a good notebook performer, and that Vista is ready for the market.

 

Well, I'm using RTM also, but my reaction isn't as positive. Yes, going into "Power saver" mode (what it is actually called) does extend the battery life to near XP levels, but as mentioned it also turns off DWN (and aero). Personally, I find that look ugly and don't like using it. Also, your machine will run slower, as your processor will more frequently enter deeper sleep states, and will require more demand to increase its levels. Leaving the power setting at "Balanced" will decrease battery life by around 15-20% over XP, not a trivial amount. But you will get DWM and aero, and a faster responding processor. It's a user preference issue I suppose, but not a trivial one.

That said, I love Vista, and HATE using XP now on other people's machines. With a high-end system (dual core processor, 2 GB memory, and an aero-supported video card) Vista is SO much faster than XP, and looks fantastic to boot.

 

I'd expect Vista's battery consumption to vary a lot depending on hardware (and GPU in particular)

One problem is that the GPU has to run in 3d-mode for a lot of the time, and for the last 10 years, manufacturers have designed GPU's from the philosophy that "3d-mode can suck as much power as it likes, we need the performance. In 2d-mode, we have to be careful so it's able to run silently and not kill the battery".

When people report such varying experiences with Vista, I expect it's down to different hardware. For some hardware, Vista is only a few percent worse than XP, and on different systems, it'll drain the battery in next to no time.

Might be interesting if people mentioned, in addition to their experience with Vista's battery life, also told us their notebook specs. We might be able to spot some kind of pattern in it then

 

RC1 was too buggy to test properly for me.

RC2 battery life W/ Aero on MAX Performance running was about 2 1/2 hrs or more.

RTM W/ Aero on MAX performance is the same.

On XP on MAX performance I can get 3 hrs or more. (mostly 3hr and 10 or 15 min extra)

So basically I get anywhere from 10 - 35 mins less battery time IMO.

 

thanks for all the quick and helpful response. good to hear that vista is not a notebook killer that we all once thought it will be.