Laptop battery life with Windows 7


Battery Life  

56 members have voted

  1. 1. Have you noticed a difference compared to Vista?

    • Less
      10
    • No Change
      11
    • Slight Increase
      24
    • Significant Increase
      11


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So...have any of you laptop users noticed a change in battery life running Windows 7?

Personally, my experiences with it on my Dell XPS M1210 laptop have noticed a significant increase in battery life with it. The power saving is significantly improved from Vista. The advanced controls give you plenty of control, and seem to actually work more effectively.

Interested to hear what others think...

Edited by phunkymunky
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I've noticed an extra 30 - 40 minutes depending on what i am doing. Mind you, i have tweaked the advanced options a little more this time around.

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I voted no change since the time is about the same as in XP. It seems it underclocks slightly less though and I use Aero transparancy for the balanced profile so I can't complain. The laptop is a few years old as well. :)

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i have not really noticed much of a difference however the charge on my notebook does not stay very long anyway we are talking about 30 to 40 minutes max when the screen is turned down and no wireless access is enabled. Then again the notebook is also 4 years old so that has something to do with it.

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7 tells me that my battery is dead, and I should consider replacing......but with XP/2000/Vista, it takes a charge. 7 just refuses to let the battery charge @ all.....now I should mention, yes, this laptop is quite old, however, with the older OS's I mentioned, it would at least charge, leaving me about a 20 min. window in case of a power failure, sort of like a UPS...... 7 doesn't even give me a chance....if the power goes out, well, the laptop goes off with the power. I simply cannot afford to buy a replacement battery, as expensive as the darn things are. :no:

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7 tells me that my battery is dead, and I should consider replacing......but with XP/2000/Vista, it takes a charge. 7 just refuses to let the battery charge @ all.....now I should mention, yes, this laptop is quite old, however, with the older OS's I mentioned, it would at least charge, leaving me about a 20 min. window in case of a power failure, sort of like a UPS...... 7 doesn't even give me a chance....if the power goes out, well, the laptop goes off with the power. I simply cannot afford to buy a replacement battery, as expensive as the darn things are. :no:

well the battery is Dead so even when running it for 20mins on an Old Os prolly not wise , so if i was you save up to buy a new battery . my best friend josh took an old POS Pentium 4 laptop he had lying around that used to get on a full charge maby if he was lucky 1hr 34min now with windows 7 he manage with the power saving options going everywhere eek out just shy over 2hrs

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Uh, compared to what?

W7 vs. Vista?

W7 vs. XP?

The specifics of the question makes a big difference...

You're absolutely correct. I should have asked compared to Vista.

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Running Windows 7 64-bit on my 17" Unibody MacBook Pro I have noticed the Battery Life to be better then when I ran Vista on my Notebook. It appears to run cooler then with Vista as-well. I would say Windows 7 is on-par with OS X when running on my Notebook for battery life. I however can't reach the 8 Hour battery life my notebook can get in OS X due to Windows 7 only being able to use the 9600GT and not the 9400M which I can use in OS X to increase battery life by an extra hour. No biggy and definitely not Microsoft's fault. (All Apple's Fault)

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Windows 7 was the ticket to my XPS M1210 batteries' spiralling fall towards death. It was 80% for the PDC build, then it quickly slipped to less than half and now it's at 32%.

Probably not the OS's fault anyways, but oh well. Crappy battery is crappy battery.

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I have no idea. I don't get my stop watch out and time silly things like these.. I get a good 4 hours at least though.

Not necessarily a silly thing to ask if you're looking at the potential to upgrade a whole fleet of laptops to Windows 7. Power users in the business that do a lot of travel and work will want to know if battery life has improved under a new OS.

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I read a post on a Dell blog that in their internal tests with the RC had noticed improvements in battery life as compared to Vista. Personally I have not noticed any significant improvement, maybe because I run Fedora as main OS on my ThinkPad.

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