Windows 7 Battery Tests

Anyone tried this yet? Just read that Microsoft claims a minimum 11% improvement over Vista...Will try it when I get home, but i'd be interested to see everyone else's results too! And test against XP too if you can!

Stating your system specs will be more helpful to everyone but not neccissary, just want to get a general feel for the level of improvement if there is any at all.

 

10-25 minutes better battery life for me. Specs in sig.

 

Under light usage I'm seeing improvements of nearly 2 hours, a little bit more load on the system and it's still an hour extra.

I'm sure watching a DVD while encoding video won't see any gains, but I'm thrilled for an extra 1:45 while surfing the net.

My specs are in my signature, and I'm seeing almost 6 hours now with a 6 cell battery. Intel P8400 Montevina and X4500 graphics. It's a 5400RPM Western Digital 160Gb HDD and I have the LED backlit screen.

Greg

 

I got about 20 minutes longer run-time with Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro than I got with Vista SP1. Total time I got before the critical battery warning was about 2 hours 45 minutes. This is under medium load, where I was doing the following:

* Listening to music through Zune, with volume at about 30% (remember to grab that MP3 fix)
* Surfing the web with IE8
* Medium brightness setting (The MBP's screen is exceptionally bright!)
* Visual Studio 2008

I also didn't hear the fans spin up like I normally would with Vista. They only spun up when using VS2008 to compile a reasonably large project. Also, this is without the Boot Camp drivers they wouldn't install for the life of me.

 

Huh, the poll adds up to a 110% right now?!

 

It's a multiple choice poll.

Greg

 

Was going to make it just one but didnt know if some people would realize that Vista is more of a battery hog than Vista so I just made it multiple choice...

 

Vista isn't always a battery hog compared to XP, it depends on the machine. On a newer machine with Intel graphics, Vista can have better battery life.

Greg

 

Battery life for me in 7 seems a lot less reduced, once unplugged, maybe getting a 1.5 hrs just using internet, would get a lot more under vista. Thats using the balanced power plan on both.

 

Are you sure it is the balanced power plan, when I installed it defaulted to High Performance. Make sure all of you drivers are installed, particularly the chipset drivers.

Greg

 

Yup, it's in balanced, chipsets installed, but I'll have a look on intel, see if there's any newer ones.

I'm also kinda thinking the battery is starting to go, as i've seen a reduced life lately across the board in vista aswell, it does get hammered as a few people in my house use the laptop, they always forget to charge when on lower power, so it's always dead and getting charged up way to much.

 

Then something must be wrong with your laptop. Cause I get almost the same battery life as XP in 7. Vista is little worse.

 

That too! Multiple choice kinda catches everything

Anyway, got around to testing Vista and 7 for myself. Kinda cheated though cause I didnt want to wait around all night for the battery to die. So instead I monitored the amount of mW the machine was sucking out in vista and then in 7 while completely idle. Figured this would be more fair anyhow considering I wont be doing exactly the same thing the next day.

In Vista it's pulling in about 18W while in 7 im getting close to 15W so I'm seeing about a 17% increase in 7. For my 71Wh battery this translates into 48mins extra. Dont know if it'll be better or worse with apps and other stuff running, but I'm going to assume there will be less difference as the increase should be similar across both OSes for the same app, thus reducing the difference ratio between OSes. Will test individual apps later when I have more time and post the results. If benefits are noticed No longer have XP installed so I can't compare that.

 

In Windows 7 by default the balanced power plan has maximum processor state set to 100% where as I don't think Vista has it set to the same. You might want to make sure your power plans are similar at the very least before comparing battery times. Even power saver in Windows 7 has maximum processor state set to 100%. Or well it was that way for me anyway. I'm not getting much of a gain, maybe about 10 minutes extra.

 

I'm getting about 30 mins more with 7, on my Vostro 1500.

 

Actually im using RMClock to override OS power management, so the differences I noted should be on very similar settings. Both were undervolted the same to the same voltage and both set to the lowest possible clock speed. Both gpu's were left at stock speeds and the same on both. Backlight settings were both on lowest and wifi cards were off in both tests as well. I tried to control for as much as possible, so the resulting difference could be better accounted for.

 

I get 1-2 hours more than in Vista, light usage.

 

i'm getting 15 minutes less in 7 than i do in XP. and i only get an hour and 10 minutes anyways!!