We are only weeks away from the launch of Microsoft’s new and much hyped operating system Windows 7 which is due out on October 22nd, but recent reviews are casting doubt on whether Windows 7 will cut it for netbooks, well as far as battery life is concerned anyway.
Laptop Magazine reported that although Windows 7 performs better than Windows Vista it fares dramatically worse than Windows XP on Netbooks.
“It looks like most netbooks may be optimized for Windows XP, and without the proper drivers, some netbooks get dramatically worse battery life when running Windows 7″ said the magazine.
On the magazine’s blog it said “when we ran our standard battery test on the Toshiba NB205 under Windows 7, it lost more than 3 hours. Under XP it got an amazing 9 hours and 24 minutes, but with Windows 7 it only lasted for 6 hours and 15 minutes”.
Most netbooks today come with Windows XP and Microsoft are keen to see Windows XP ditched altogether in favour of the more profitable Windows 7, they have also made no secret of the fact that they are not a lover of netbooks either.
However, love them or hate them, netbooks are popular and battery life is a key selling point on these ultra portable devices as after all, portability is what they are all about.
So what if we install the proper drivers?
“Installing new Win 7 drivers from Toshiba only resulted in an extra half hour or so” said the magazine’s blog which continues with “we also noticed a bit of a drop-off with another netbook we tested: the MSI U123”.
Laptop magazine are not alone in their findings either, in July Tom’s Hardware website found that the Acer Aspire One netbook running with Windows 7 release candidate lasted 2.5 hours less than it did with Windows XP Service Pack 3.
The side said that the poor battery life with Windows 7 made it “unacceptable for a mobile platform”.
If that isn’t enough to cast doubt then other complaints have been surfacing on the net in various netbook user forums too.
To be on the safe side it might be advisable for netbook users to consider waiting a while before upgrading to the new operating system just to see how it goes, particularly as many manufacturers have still to make the necessary drivers available to ensure that netbooks will run efficiently on Windows 7.
Act in haste repent at leisure as they say.
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Properly configured, you can still get some very good battery life figures out of Windows 7 on laptops and netbooks. However, you have to set them up as such. If you install all the features and widgets and fobs that you would do with a desktop install of Windows, of course it will get lower battery life. If you install it with a feature set that keeps the fact it is a low-powered portable in mind, and you set your power settings as such, you will get a lot better result. Once we see some profiles coming out of OEMs and more drivers from manufacturers, then we might be able to take better stock of how good battery life is or isn’t. These machines have drivers and profiles that are tuned to XP, so we would need to see installs and drivers for these machines tuned to 7. I wouldn’t pass judgement quite yet.
I have installed Windows 7 on my ASUS EeePC 1000HE, and find it runs a lot better than Windows Vista. I get about 6-7 hours battery life out of it – more than enough. I’ve not had any issues with it either, has been performing rock-solid.
- Justyn