Nick White, Vista's Product Manager, has responded to an article entitled “Vista, Aero, battery life . . . and Doom” by Dwight Silverman, the tech reviewer at the Houston Chronicle, regarding the impact that the Aero theme has on battery life and performance. White emphasizes that to fully maximize battery life, window transparency is turned off when the machine is put into a power-saving profile but Aero is not because “in the end, doing so is not going to save you much more power”.
White agrees with Dwight (yeah, I had to make it rhyme) that the Aero theme makes the GPU work harder and therefore uses more power. However, he states it’s “really not that much more” noting the power needed for a notebook’s display (15-25% of the battery) to Aero’s (1-4%). He believes that saving the extra power is not worth losing “the cool features that make Windows Vista fun to use, such as Flip 3D, taskbar previews, window transparency and so on”.
White mentions that battery life varies widely depending on the workload the machine is running. He also underlines that testing the impact of software features on battery life is exceptionally tricky, even by benchmarking standards. He claims this is because the charge a battery requires can vary on a multitude of factors, including the battery technology, how recently the battery was power-cycled, how old the battery is, and even the temperature of the battery when it was charged.
Link: Vista, Aero, battery life . . . and Doom
News source: Windows Vista Blog
White agrees with Dwight (yeah, I had to make it rhyme) that the Aero theme makes the GPU work harder and therefore uses more power. However, he states it’s “really not that much more” noting the power needed for a notebook’s display (15-25% of the battery) to Aero’s (1-4%). He believes that saving the extra power is not worth losing “the cool features that make Windows Vista fun to use, such as Flip 3D, taskbar previews, window transparency and so on”.
White mentions that battery life varies widely depending on the workload the machine is running. He also underlines that testing the impact of software features on battery life is exceptionally tricky, even by benchmarking standards. He claims this is because the charge a battery requires can vary on a multitude of factors, including the battery technology, how recently the battery was power-cycled, how old the battery is, and even the temperature of the battery when it was charged.
Link: Vista, Aero, battery life . . . and Doom News source: Windows Vista Blog
Just transparency, which is apparently the most battery draining part.
Just transparency, which is apparently the most battery draining part.
F**k. I may just turn off Aero completely and leave it at that regardless if it's on outlet power or battery.
Just transparency, which is apparently the most battery draining part.
F**k. I may just turn off Aero completely and leave it at that regardless if it's on outlet power or battery.
Well what was your oppinion of the battery life while just disabling the transparency? You didnt seem bothered with the life until someone mentioned it then.
I guess it depends what 1 - 4 % (if right) makes up in terms of time. For me I'm prob looking at 2 - 8mins max anyway if thats the ratios your going with.
As far as I'm aware, unless they changed that from XP, wich I doubt, you should have both a battery and a "plugged" profile and windows will switch between these automatically if you plug it in or not.
No, it hasn't changed but none of the profiles--even the mobile--turn off Aero when you're on battery. It's not even an option. The application I speak of runs in the background and does turn off Aero.
Don't need Aero + I like XP + Aero drains the battery = Me not getting Vista on a Laptop.
Don't need Aero + I like XP + Aero drains the battery = Me not getting Vista on a Laptop.
Couldn't agree more.... tbh I just cannot for the life of me see why anyone bought Vista.
Don't need Aero + I like XP + Aero drains the battery = Me not getting Vista on a Laptop.
Couldn't agree more.... tbh I just cannot for the life of me see why anyone bought Vista.
Because it came with my new laptop. Battery life's fine. Next?
or go the whole hog and go back to win95 and maybe it'll last longer than both as it can barely do anything (or maybe not as it wont have proper APM) :p
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