back to article Windows 7 upgrades Vista laptops to lower battery life

Laptop owners upgrading their Windows XP and Windows Vista machines to Windows 7 are complaining that Microsoft's new OS has severely reduced their available battery life. One user tells The Reg that after upgrading his circa 2007 HP notebook from Vista to Windows 7, the machine's battery life dropped from two hours to a half …

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    1. GaryH

      why not ...

      just change the default action away from sleep / hibernate / shutdown when the battery reaches 3(?)% to do nothing. ok - it will just die when the battery is actually dead but you can at least use the blooming thing for a bit longer. I haven't noticed this problem on my HP laptop with the RC on it - does anyone know if the problem goes away if you plug in and then remove the power when the warnings start (giving it a short burst of power) - does it stay at critical or go back up to reasonable levels?

      1. Keith Oldham

        Re : why not ...

        Doesn't this risk data loss or disk corruption as the machine dies ?

        Sorry I'm not aware of how fault tolerant recent Windows file systems are.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Fault tolerant ? Windows ?

          Excuse me while I get a new keyboard, this one just got sputtered on.

      2. markp 1
        Boffin

        because that gives you a bit more chance to find power

        annoying yes, but that means the battery has remaining juice in it to either a/ chuck data at the hard disk during hibernation (a power-hungry action that may take a few moments to kick in), b/ stay in standby for a few hours more (using a trickle of energy to keep the RAM refreshed), so that whilst you're waiting for your flight to land, or to find a plug, or buy a replacement charger or dealing with whatever emergency means you've run on to emergency reserve (going below 10% can be harmful to battery lifetime) the important document you were working on and only had maybe 20 minutes more work to do on it (... not the 5 or so that a typical 3% charge represents) won't be destroyed - either by you having forgotten to save, or that bit of the disk being garbled when the power finally fails.

  1. David Edwards
    Stop

    How many of you lot can read?

    As a very few of you have said, Windows is not consuming more juice, its just falsely warning that the battery is at low voltage. Depending on your power settings windows MAY turn off (or hibernate) you laptop at a certain level. The issue is that although in reality the battery is "fine" windows thinks its not. MS admits this as is clearly explained in the article.

    And im glad I read this as my Acer Ferrari 4000 has done just this sine WIN7 was installed. Thanks EL reg, I wont be buying that new battery then!!!!

  2. dave 93

    No doubt Jack 'MS' Schofield will spin it as a feature in the Guardian

    Strangely silent on the iPad so far....

  3. mkc
    Thumb Down

    My Fujitsu Lifebook E series does this

    "We recommend that you replace your battery", then goes from 100% to 20% within minutes and then shuts off . Was fine with Vista before the "upgrade" to Windows 7. My laptop has to be plugged in all the time now.

    1. Gis Bun
      Megaphone

      My Fujitsu Lifebook E series does this

      You can always go back to Vista. [hehehehe]

  4. Simbooth

    Same here

    I have a 2 year old HP dv9000; and was on the beta and the RC with no problems whatsoever. dish out £30 to upgrade to W7 Pro (student discount) and all of a sudden there is this problem, as well as an issue with the sound card (or to be more precise how hp's quicktouch buttons interact with it).

    Ran powercfg /energy to generate a report, and it seems that the full capacity of the battery is being misreported, leading windows to believe that the battery is only charging to about 40% capacity, which triggers the alert. Personally the only thing I seem to have noticed in commmon between the laptops is the BIOS (Phoenix). I've also contacted HP support, and they just didnt have a clue WTF was going on.

    One Service Pack 1 with fries please!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Wala

    By God! He's swearing in Arabic (perhaps).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Good to see the school boy french continues

      I'm guessing he meant voila and wasn't speaking Tagalog

      1. FreeTard
        FAIL

        Wala!

        Oh good Jeebus.

        Epic fail there son.

  6. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Joke

    "in some cases, the new tool may be working properly"

    Newsflash : Microsoft may have finally made a tool that actually works from time to time, in some specific cases.

  7. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    It sounds like a useless tool

    Supplied by a bunch of fairly useless tools.

  8. Rolanddd

    not affecting T60 thinkpads

    Hopefully they put out an update for the affected laptops quick as I am sure that must be quite annoying. Luckily my company's Thinkpads are unaffected and I actually see better battery run times since upgrading them from Vista to 7.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    2008 Dell Vostro 1700

    Reports 53 mins with 73% charge under Windows 7. Same laptop reports 1 hour 32 mins with 85% under Ubuntu 9.10. Make of that what you will...

  10. Andy Jones
    WTF?

    Hang on a fine mo ...

    Didn't that bird in the taxi claim there was better battery life under Windows 7? The lying bitch. Anyone got her address? I am fecking suing her! Windows 7 was her idea after all.

  11. Cucumber C Face
    Coat

    Same amount of work with Win 7?

    <winge>two hours to a half hour</winge>

    They probably just lost the infernal intervals on Vista where nothing happens for no apparent reason during which it can't even muster an hourglass :-(

    Also any hardware vendor['s bespoke battery management software is going to get blown away in an OS reinstall.

    Or maybe the batteries are just four years older than when they timed it with Vista?

  12. James Pickett

    Alternative

    "consider replacing your battery"

    Why not "consider replacing your OS" (with a useful pull-down list of alternatives, like XP and a selection of Linux distros)?

  13. tanker1
    Thumb Up

    Thanks for the heads-up

    My Fujitsu Xi 2528 started blinking battery warnings and shutting down (for "shutting down" read "turning off completely without shutting down") after 5 minutes a couple of weeks ago. I had presumed that my battery was dead and was about to order a new one at £90 so many thanks El Reg for saving me some hard earned cash. Roll on the patch for this.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    never had power problems on my laptop under 7

    I run a Sony Vaio and get 8+ hrs out of it when I put Windows into power save profile, yes I loose all the funky aero stuff etc but not really that bothered when I just want it last all day.

    When I run full fat version i.e. all aero etc battery lasts about 5 hours.

    These figures are both better than what I used to get on vista, most pepole I know that have switched to 7 have also had the same experience.... battery life is better in 7.

    Of the poeple I know that didnt have a positive experience first time round it was because they had power profiles that run at full speed and had missing or incorrect drivers.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    Windows 7 is great

    I have been running Windows 7 on all of my machines since the RC releases and they are running very fine. The battery life is much better than it was on fugly XP. The performance is also snappier. So, all in all, XP sucks balls and Windows 7 FTW.

  16. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    the last 20 years

    Yep, that nicely sums up the last 20 years of MS history: "But the company also says that in some cases, the new tool may be working properly."

  17. Bill Fresher
    Thumb Up

    Excellent

    'Wala' has made my day and will henceforth become part of my vocabulary.

  18. This post has been deleted by its author

  19. dark1here

    Lower battery life

    My Toshiba does similar. Is there any way of shutting off this useless feature, as the BIOS is quite capable of shutting it down when needed. I have heard of premature ejaculation but premature capitulation is new to me!

  20. J 3
    Joke

    Must be said

    Windows 7 is not ready for the desktop, how can they get something that basic wrong, etc. etc. etc. (just copy and paste from some commentard on a story about any Linux distro)

    Ceci n'est pas une joke.

  21. Gis Bun

    Battery life

    The question is whether it's a Windows 7 issue or the drivers from the manufacturers. If those who installed Windows 7 used the default drivers from Windows 7, I suspect the battery life may not be as long. Did they look at the manufacturer's web site for updates?

  22. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    ACPI

    "But the company also says that in some cases, the new tool may be working properly. In other words, if it says your battery needs replacing, it may need replacing. But for so many laptops owners posting to TechNet, this is clearly not the case."

    Brilliant! I'll just put warnings in *my* OS saying the hard drive's bad, battery's bad, the computer's too slow, and you need more RAM. The warnings will all be true SOMETIMES.

    -----

    "Also any hardware vendor['s bespoke battery management software is going to get blown away in an OS reinstall."

    No it's not, this stuff is handled by ACPI, it's in the system BIOS.

    So... 2 possibilities.

    1) Windows 7 has ACPI bugs. I won't rag on them for this (as long as they fix it promptly), ACPI spec is fairly complex, and it's interactions with the OS are too.

    2) Microsoft's umm.. Microsoftian ploys are backfiring on them. Microsoft provides an ACPI compiler that produces (slightly) non-standard ACPI, this initially caused problems for non-Windows ACPI implementations (until they made them "bug compatible" with the Windows ACPI interpreter).. if Windows 7's ACPI code was redone maybe it doesn't deal with this. Also the ACPI table will check the OS... Windows 2000, Windows XP, "Windows XP SP1", XP SP2, Vista shows as "Windows 2006", etc. Often times these tables are just plain broken if the OS is unrecognized (and some few check for "Linux" and return broken tables too!). It has been suggested Microsoft encouraged these broken tables, so Windows would run smooth while other OSes crap out on the same machine. On these BIOSes, Windows 7 will probably not show up as "Windows 2006", it'll be unrecognized, and a broken table could be returned -- they are being hoisted by their own petard. The 3 solutions. 1) BIOS updates all around (to fix the ACPI tables). 2) The Linux solution, it now claims it is Windows 2000, XP, 2003, *and* Vista for ACPI purposes, to make sure it doesn't get some broken "default" or even worse broken "Linux" table. 3) Least attractive solution -- Linux supports loading custom ACPI tables, so I suppose Windows could too -- people will retrieve the broken ACPI tables, fix the bugs, and post the fixed table online to load at boot time.

  23. Jonny F
    Thumb Up

    Win7 doubled by HP laptop/tablet battery life

    Funny, when anyone asks me why i like Windows 7 i reply that the battery life on my laptop is at least doubled from Vista!

    HP swivel screen laptop/tablet. Never going back to Vista to test it, but i recon i get 3X the battery life much of the time.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    FLP

    Noticed this with FLP too. My 2006 Toshiba barely lasts 20 mins compared to 2 hours with vanilla XP!

  25. David Haig
    Unhappy

    Crept into Vista as well?

    My wife's 1 year old Dell Inspiron has just started doing this in the last week - and it's running Vista Home. Hasn't effected the performance but it is very annoying. especially as it's just bloody Microsoft doesn't seem to cut it anymore.

  26. Wallyb132
    FAIL

    a broken clock...

    "But the company also says that in some cases, the new tool may be working properly."

    thats as good as saying a broken clock is right twice a day...

  27. Watashi

    Buggy

    Well, it seems MS still can't release an OS without any bugs in it! Of course, this wouldn't be an issue on the iPad as users can't change their own batteries anyway.

  28. Richard Cartledge
    Happy

    Get a Mac

    Win 7 works fine on my Macbook Pro. It must be the hardware partners.

  29. Adrian Esdaile
    Happy

    FWIW: Asus N10 OK!

    Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit, Asus N10 with 2GB RAM - no problems. Have been running Win 7 since RTM version, haven't seen any behaviour like this, use the dear little N10 a lot on trains / planes on battery power. Still getting 5-6 hours with the Nvidia chipset activated and running Autodesk Revit (All your RAM are belong Autodesk arrrr har!)

    So, no problems here.

    MS fanboi rapidly becoming Apple fanboi, too I might add.

  30. Kilgaard
    Alien

    Not just affecting laptops

    I came home on Friday to find my (custom built) *desktop* computer had shutdown due to low battery. At the time I just passed it off as my kids putting the computer into suspect rather than shutdown, but now I'm not so sure.

  31. My New Handle
    FAIL

    Wala!

    The last time I heard that was from Omid Jalili in Hammersmith. Does he read The Reg?

    Win 7 has worked okay on the Samsung NC10 that several variants of Ubuntu have had difficulty with. They seem a matched pair (not sure that is a good thing really).

    What a pi55er that M$ are still making the cock-ups that they have always. Fewer, perhaps. But they still have the talent for breaking the simplest but most impacting. I'd cop the complete arse if I had bought a replacement battery on the strength of Win 7's dubious warning. One wonders how many people have done just that ...

    Epic ...

  32. Tezfair

    My battery dead too...

    However as for better battery life I would dispute this. Under XP the CPU hardly ran unless I was doing a lot of stuff. Under vista and W7 it runs constantly. With near double of background processes its going to draw more power - my powerpack squeaks when its been asked to supply more power so under XP - quiet, under WV or W7 squeaking!!

    Its more likely the battery technology has improved the running time rather then W7 making the improvements.

  33. AlexShu
    Alert

    Battery

    My battery is wrong! I was after install Windows 7 on my netbook. (Samsung NC10). I don't know is it a problem in W7 or another...but it's a fact.!

    I'm from Russia.

  34. markp 1
    Alert

    what's it like with brand new batteries?

    Having run my lappy for a few years now and still being happy with its XP performance, my upgrade plan is currently along the lines of doubling (and maxing) the RAM, laying in a second replacement battery, getting the last and largest of the 2.5" IDE disks (as its too old for SATA) and upgrading to a middling version of Win 7, skipping Vista entirely. Beats mucking about with a netbook, so long as 7 can deal with i915 graphics.

    This kind of malarkey could be well annoying though...... does it just affect well worn batteries that are maybe halfway through their useful life (as my current one is), or all of 'em? Or is it a specifically Vista upgrade thing that can be ignored?

  35. heyrick Silver badge
    Alert

    OMFG!

    I'm reading all the quotes of battery life in various situations. Let's just say my eeePC901 XP gets around six and a half hours out of a charge. More if I turn off WiFi, like when I pop in the SD card containing all the MP4 stuff my PVR has recorded off satellite TV.

    Seriously, what use to me is a computer that can maybe manage an hour and a half and that's NOT when the OS is misreporting reality?

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