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Vista Eating Battery Life
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri May 04, 2007 01:53 PM
from the glutton-for-power dept.
from the glutton-for-power dept.
LWATCDR writes "It looks like more issues with Vista drains notebook batteries. Using the Aero interface really eats into your notebooks battery life. Of course one of the new 'features' of Vista is supposed to be better power management. This provides a great opportunity for a showdown. How long until someone loads Vista on a MacBook and compares run time? It would provide a flat playing field now that Apple makes Intel-powered notebooks."
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Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
I am now running LongHorn Server Beta 3 on my notebook, running as a standard user. Glass and Sidebar are not even available, and my battery life seems to have gone up significantly, I assume because fewer processes are running. IE is hardened on server and it is certainly more secure. And yes, I have enabled the wireless functionality and search indexer. My desktop does look much like Win 2K.
Security tends to go up as you run less functionality. It appears that battery life does so as well.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Still wondering why you need a security-challenged web browser on a server, hardened or not.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
I would note that locked down as it its, it does break a lot of web sites. Paranoid as I am, I typically have explicit distrust keys for Flash and I disable all multimedia to avoid parser errors.
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Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Processor intensive tasks using more engery is something an average user does not understand.
Though this is the first time I have heard the aero interface uses more engery, it would not shock me if it does. If so it would be yet another case that Microsoft technicaly had a good idea with very poor execution, and ignoring larger existing issues... like for example on a laptop the annoying tendancy of loading unnessicary
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Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
See all that is rhetorical because it's based on an assumption that the implementation is incorrect, yet I've never met a developer that can add glitz to an OS desktop without consuming more resources so I see no reason for such assumption.
As for "better power management", that means the power settings configured by the end users. IE Do you want it to hibernate under certain conditions, etc. These can now be setup across networks by admins to shut down or hibernate/sleep all machines during off hours, such as on weekends. It also means notifications to running software of an impending shutdown or sleep state. Those new features are all related to management of the machine by the user. It has nothing to do with the OS using more or less power in any particular state.
Sorry guys, but this is just another "gee I wish I could find yet one more way to bash MS" story. If there is a legit grievance then hell I'll chip in, but this doesn't exactly get me up in arms hearing that *shocker* more GUI effects = more resource usage. That's common sense.
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Re:AMD64 (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've gathered about Vista, XP would outperform it in just about every way imaginable, except in its ability to funnel vendor-locked-in cash to Microsoft.
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Re:AMD64 (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:AMD64 (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:AMD64 (Score:5, Insightful)
If the coffin is a freaking mile long. There are quite a few nails to go. Reading Slashdot can give you a biased view of the real world.
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Re:AMD64 (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
How's that funny? MS has to sell Vista to OEMS and OEMS want more ways to force you to upgrade your hardware...and everytime the general populous upgrades their hardware, they're forced into buying a new copy of Windows. It's mutually beneficial to both MS and the hardware industry to advertise this out the wazoo!
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The last time.... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac, or I'd do it. But maybe this counts: http://www.macworld.co.uk/mac/reviews/index.cfm?r
Layne
Re:The last time.... (Score:5, Interesting)
At least last time I tried to run Vista on my MBP, part of the problem was Apple drivers that weren't optimized for power saving. The processor ran at full speed all the time (where on OS X it used SpeedStep) and the HD would never spin down. Thus I don't know how much of the fault is Microsoft's and how much is Apple's.
With that in mind, I got about 60% the battery life from Vista that I got from OS X.
Still, though, OS X's decent battery life gives the lie to the idea that "it's a processor-intensive process. Duh." If the Aero interface is eating battery, then why isn't Aqua, which is just as full of eye candy?
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Re:The last time.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Obligatory Slashdot car analogy (Score:5, Funny)
That's like saying you're expecting great savings from a fuel management system on a V12 Aston Martin.
Re:Obligatory Slashdot car analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Shame this Aston Martin runs like it's got the engine of a Lada though.
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It's not a V12 Aston Martin (Score:5, Funny)
Note: not a troll nor flamebait; just having fun here with the analogy.
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Re:It's not a V12 Aston Martin (Score:4, Funny)
Fixed that for you.
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Vista could eat kittens (Score:4, Funny)
obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
First post...NOT (Score:5, Funny)
Mac Notebooks Battery Life rules (Score:4, Interesting)
Everytime I've used an iBook or a Powerbook, I'm amazed at how long the battery lasts. While some other brands (e.g. Dell) have decent battery life compared to others (e.g. HP and Toshiba, at least in my experience), I'm always knocked off by Apple notebooks' battery life.
Now if only Apple notebooks had two mouse buttons instead of hacks around it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, Apple laptops seem to treat batteries better, at least from my anecdotal experience. Most of the Dell/HP laptop owners I know end up with horrible battery life after not that many cycles. After the same amount of use, my Mac laptops have typically only lost a bit of their capacity. (My current MBP with 180 cycles on the one-year-old replacement battery has about 90% of its original capacity.) Whether this is due to better power-management software, better battery design, or better battery cooling, I c
Re:Mac Notebooks Battery Life rules (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Mac Notebooks Battery Life rules (Score:5, Informative)
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There are more things than aero which drain the ba (Score:4, Insightful)
aero is one of the factors, but, there is a lot of additional startup disk processing even after the ui has been started
the drm which is in there left and right adds additional processor cycles
the desktop search adds an additional processing overhead etc... etc...
or ot sum it up added automated features simply need energy!
The battery drain is less annoying than another load of idiotic features, UAC for instance is what sudo and the osx do but solved in a totally idiotic fashion, the new explorer is a lousy clone of mac osxs pathfinder (basically a clone of the worst features of finder and pathfinder), the system cofiguration tool setup is outright confusing with display settings for instance being distributed into 5-6 various tools some dont even have the slightest to do with the display settings.
the new start bar is outright annoying to hell, the search is inelegantly solved and annot be put into the tray where it really belongs, no decent desktop switcher, startup times are longer than a fully configured linux.
The Expose copy is outright useless, Vista home allows you to backup for a restore you have to upgrade to ultimate, the wireless configuration is lousy as hell. The half transparent border effect causes motion sicknes... etc...
The only positive thing I really noticed is once it is loaded programs startup in no time, netbeans takes about 4 seconds openoffice around 3 and that on a 5200rpm notebook drive. There seems to be some serious app caching going on which optimizes the load times, especially java programs benefit tremendously from it. Tomcat 0.8 seconds, netbeans 4 seconds awesome.
Re:There are more things than aero which drain the (Score:4, Informative)
the drm which is in there left and right adds additional processor cycles
Look, I know that DRM is really unpopular, but could we not have absolutely ridiculously stupid assertions like this that DRM is affecting everyting "left and right" and is somehow running down the battery in a noticeable way?
Sheesh.
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Re:There are more things than aero which drain the (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have any fucking clue how DRM works on Windows Vista? It's not some magical happy service that's running all the time. It's integrated into the kernel and into Windows Media Foundation and the Windows Media Framework. Of course, it's integrated into the Kernel and Windows Media Framework on XP too.
XP has many of the same DRM and DRM-esque features as Vista (WGA/Activation, Secure Audio Path, Windows Media DRM, Signed drivers, ICT support). Try playing an HD-DVD on XP with a licensed player and a card/monitor that doesn't support HDCP. Try playing a Region 2 DVD on an XP system where the RPC1 or RPC2 region has been set to Region 1. Try playing a copy of T2 Extreme HD on XP without registering it.
Yes, there are new DRM technologies in Vista. But just like the DRM features in XP or - god forbid - Mac OS X, the solution is obvious: don't buy into bullshit DRM.
I don't have an HD-DVD drive for a very good reason - I don't want to put up with bullshit DRM. Once the DRM has been cracked (truly cracked - not just cracked for movies released prior to date X), I'll consider getting a drive. Until then, I watch plain old DVDs using VLC and my region-hacked drive.
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No suprise here - same for XGL or AIGLX (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be the sidebar (Score:4, Informative)
Disk indexing (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats the only issue I've had with Vista so I guess its not a big deal, but...
Don't you have to enable Aero manually? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about notebook users, but when I purchased and installed Vista, Aero was not initially running. I had to go select it from the Themes area of the Display control panel.
So when they write the following:
Seems like more of an issue with educating users. Although, maybe someone will develop a miserly mobile GPU that's optimized for what Aero does.
Finally, this part of the article is a bit screwy:
I don't think the study implies that. It just says that application load time is unaffected. Aero's going to draw more power through the GPU even when applications are not being loaded...
Not so (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not so (Score:5, Informative)
First off, it's a desktop, measured at the AC adapter. If a standard laptop took 150W, then the battery would only last 20 minutes. Clearly, laptops take less power overall and the differences caused by the CPU's load will be amplified.
Second, it measures the power at only two points - no load and full load. I suspect that no-load between XP and vista is about the same because they are basically doing nothing. You need a real-use benchmark to compare the two.
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Oh FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, the story here shouldn't be "aero drains your battery". It should be "For the first time since laptops became popular, MS is offering an OS that will actually last longer, when properly configured". Vista w/o Aero lasts longer on a laptop than XP. That's pretty damn impressive, actually.
Re:Oh FFS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bad Drivers / Hardware? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since it actually puts your video card to good use, Aero makes things faster, not slower. Would you want your fancy game to use some generic CPU instead of all the specalized functionaly provided by your GPU? Why should your OS be any different? Unless your hardware sucked, you would be a fool to turn Aero off--it just makes your CPU do more work!
What this power consumption business really means is hardware manufacturers need to optimize the parts of the GPU that Vista uses so they consume less power. In a year, new "Vista-Ready" laptops will probably use the same, if not significantly less power than their XP optimized counterparts. Less power you say? Hell yeah! Vista has all kinds of goodies for power management that didn't exist in XP; my desktop computer now suspends itself to... something.. after 5 minutes and will instantly wake up. Dunno if XP could that, but it sure as hell didn't on mine. It was default behavior on my Vista install.
Further, Aero is definitly not eye candy and I'd even argue that it is the first version of Windows that *doesn't* have eye candy. The user interface is crisp, snappy, and far more elegant than anything before it. You barely notice the OS is even there; XP & 95 are very "in your face". I personally love Vista - I dare say that when running on proper hardware it really makes you feel the PC has come of age. All prior windows versions feel clunky in comparison.
I eventually shut off Aero - what a CPU hog. (Score:4, Insightful)
I will give Vista credit in that the laptop comes back very quickly from sleep mode whereas that never worked well for me in XP, but that's about it. Vista with Aero is the plant from "Little Shop of Horrors" -- FEED ME!!!
Mac OS X vs Classic (Score:4, Informative)
Conflicting Stories (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Vista's extra behind-the-scenes tasks make your CPU and hard drive work harder.
2) Sleep and hibernate are broken (causing you to waste battery life doing full shutdowns and startups).
3) Aero puts the graphics chip into 3D mode, which makes it rev up to full speed (and full power consumption). The graphics card companies haven't done as much work on their mobile chips to save power as Intel has, especially when it comes to 3D mode.
My laptop's battery life was almost 50% lower in Vista (compared to XP with SP2). I say was because I switched it back to XP.
Re:4.3B last quarter (Score:5, Informative)
So everyone who bought a PC for christmas and got a Vista voucher is also counted in that list. So all those Vista Business sales only got counted in the first quarter.
PC sales are down, how can Vista Sales be sky high? maybe because MSFT counted 1.5 quarters of vista sales in one quarter. what they did is technically legal, but one can't judge Vista sales by it because of what they did. As it artificially inflates the numbers.
Lets see who they do in this quarter. Especially with Dell selling XP machines again.
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Re:4.3B last quarter (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:4.3B last quarter (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a quote from Paul Thurrott's analysis [windowsitpro.com]:
So despite the best efforts of many people in the media, and certainly Slashdot, The Register, and similar anti-MS sites, Vista has done extremely well. My bet is that it would have done even better if all this FUD wasn't being spread.
Maybe, just maybe, you're all wrong about Vista. Maybe, just maybe, Vista is a really damn good OS. Stop regurgitating the FUD and try the OS for yourself.
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Re:4.3B last quarter (Score:4, Interesting)
I read these "reviews" online, which are so completely off base and inaccurate, I'm not surprised so many people think Vista is a steaming pile.
But the fact of the matter is that virtually all of the complaints about Vista are easily debunked. Whether it's the DRM FUD, the performance FUD, the "Vista is just a pretty face on XP" FUD, the "UAC is popping up CONSTANTLY" FUD, or any of the other baloney I've read.
Is Vista perfect? Hell no. But the minor issues it has are dwarfed by how much better it is than XP in virtually every way.
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Re:4.3B last quarter (Score:5, Informative)
First, I run Vista on three machine, my laptop, my desktop, and my work machine. My laptop is an IBM T42P. Not exactly the fastest machine on earth. (1.8 Ghz, 1GB of ram, 128MB ATI FireGL 2) It runs Vista faster than it ran XP... or, rather, it "feels" faster thanks to things like Readyboost. My "Windows Experience Index" is 3.8.
My desktop is over 2 years old (3.8 Ghz, 2GB of ram, ATI Radeon X850XT), and it runs Vista blazingly fast. The index on this machine is 5.2.
My work machine is a crappy Dell Precision 360 that's about 3.5 years old. It has 2GB of ram, 64MB graphics card, and 3GHz CPU. Vista runs great, and has an index of 4.2.
So there are three machine, all of which are between 2 and 4 years old, and all of which run Vista just fine. Only the work machine doesn't do Aero due to a non-DX9 graphics card.
But that's just my personal experience. So why not look at some real benchmarks [techgage.com] done by 3rd parties. They show that Vista is comparable (slightly slower in some cases, slightly faster in others) to XP on the same hardware. In most cases, the benchmarks Vista does worst in are gaming benchmarks. Although we're only talking about 1-2% in most cases, these can be explain by immature drivers. Give it a few months and those drivers will likely be up to par with XP's.
Again, there is a LOT of FUD out there. I can see why it would be hard to sort through.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I like Vista. No, it's not "great". But one thing I like is that the UI is never stuck. You never see "invalid" window regions, you know, when you drag one window across another one that's frozen. (At least not in Aero.) I realize other OS'es worked that way first, though. I also like the new explorer interface. The glass theme is already starting to feel a bit old, but whatever. I'd like to see other effects besides glass. OS X has those cool slurping minimize/restore windows; I wouldn't say no to that.
I
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And I didn't pay for it either. I got it through MSDN.
But no, its not for everyone. Mine is probably a rare case, and the drivers are immature. Its not a good idea for the average user