Re: Vista Sucks.... a Notebook Battery Down

For a more Apples to Apples comparison, I may install my XP notebook
hard drive prior to the next meeting.

Unfortunately, I have an 80GB hard drive with XP on it because I
thought that I would need more time to transition to Vista.

Do you have any suggestions on what I can do with that extra notebook
hard drive?

One of the processes that I killed prevented the Vista laptop from
going into sleep mode quickly. I don't know which one. Now it goes
there very fast.

At times when the display has been off for a while (such as with the
lid closed) the laptop display won't turn back on. The only way out
of it is to hold the power button down to do a "hard shut down".

I chalk it up to the inevitable, "always someting" nature of Windows
PCs.

On Fri, 04 May 2007 09:11:56 -0400, Ben Myers
<ben_myers_spam_me_not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

My guess is that the power management software in Vista is nearly identical to
that in XP, because there are only a number of finite ways to manage power.
Possible exception is some additional code in Vista to handle the various dual
core processors, Intel and AMD. So what is needed here is an apples vs apples
study of how long the battery lasts under typical constant use. PC Magazine's
labs used to do a battery drain test, which was an objective measure of battery
life among competing notebooks. The same test could be applied to a pairs of
identical notebooks running XP and Vista to arrive at a more objective measure.
I would think that Vista is far more bloated than XP (isn't every Windows
release more bloated than its predecessor?), so that the computer needs to work
harder to get the same tasks done. Bloated code translates into more
instructions for the system to execute.

Battery life is yet another factor to be considered when comparing operating
systems for portables... Ben Myers

On Fri, 04 May 2007 02:09:17 -0500, Journey <rainbow@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I took about a page of Word notes, spread out throughout the two
hours, so I wasn't constantly using it. During a 15 minute break the
notebook was left on but I closed the lid.

The main thing that reassures me with regards to Vista and battery
life is that this Vista laptop appears to have the same or better
battery life than other laptops I have used in the past. I have been
going to this weekly meeting since December of 2005, with about the
same amount of usage on laptops used throughout that period.

My experiences don't match with the quote you posted. Perhaps the
person from the Thinkpad group did not aggressively trim the processes
that were running, or let Vista index the drives on battery, or
something else. I cut the processes down from about 90 to 62 (right
now as I type this). That's 28 processes that could have been running
that I didn't let run, so that might make a difference.

I would even go so far as to say that Vista has exceeded my
expectations.

On Fri, 04 May 2007 00:30:39 -0400, Ben Myers
<ben_myers_spam_me_not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

That's quite good, but for how much of the 2-hour interval was the computer
idling, and for how much time were you pounding at the keyboard? ... Ben

On Thu, 03 May 2007 20:42:48 -0500, Journey <rainbow@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, 02 May 2007 01:22:48 -0400, Ben Myers
<ben_myers_spam_me_not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The following is a direct quote from a post on the ibm thinkpad newsgroup:

Remember that power demand for this machine will be proportional to
processor speed and HDD activity. there are differences in swap file activity
for the two operating systems and for versions of each (98, XP, Vista etc.)

I've tried three versions of Win on an HP (zv6000/Athlon 64.) My impression so
far is that Vista sucks a battery down about 1.5 times faster than XP-Pro and
nearly twice as fast as Win-9x. I've dual booted W98 and suse 9.1 on this
machine -- W98 running MS-Word and Excel was good for about 3.5 hours. Suse
with Open Office about 3.0 hours. (Default APM during install.)

one factor: XP and Vista fully exploit the graphics chip.. neither 98se or Suse
do this.

So if anyone is experiencing shorter battery times with Vista, this is not a bad
explanation why. Something else to WOW! us... Ben Myers

After your post, I paid more attention to battery life. I was in a 2
hour meeting, 3:15 - 5:15. At the end of the meeting, actually after
returning home, it had 79% left on the battery.

I would say that's very good.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Vista Sucks.... a Notebook Battery Down
    ... The main thing that reassures me with regards to Vista and battery ... same amount of usage on laptops used throughout that period. ... hour meeting, 3:15 - 5:15. ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: Vista Sucks.... a Notebook Battery Down
    ... for the two operating systems and for versions of each (98, XP, Vista etc.) ... neither 98se or Suse ... So if anyone is experiencing shorter battery times with Vista, ... At the end of the meeting, ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: Vista Sucks.... a Notebook Battery Down
    ... there are differences in swap file activity ... for the two operating systems and for versions of each (98, XP, Vista etc.) ... So if anyone is experiencing shorter battery times with Vista, ... At the end of the meeting, ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: Extremely Weird CD Problem
    ... vista is on your notebook?) ... the notebook is Vista and it does read all of the files on the USB drive. ... In fact I also copied them to a folder on my Vista notebook and can run the poresentation there. ... written on the SAME BRAND OF MEDIUM, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Vista anytime upgrade horror - SATA sucks!
    ... I've had my new notebook with Vista (a Fujitsu Siemens with Vista ... I acquired a Vista "Ultimate" upgrade licence online for a hefty 199 ... I started Windows in safe mode and deleted the audio driver again. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)