There are a few reports on Twitter (http://bit.ly/10rc69">http://bit.ly/10rc69, but some right after WWDC that are not currently appearing in search results) that Snow Leopard has dramatically increased battery life. I'm curious to see how much of an impact it will have on real-life battery results (let alone marketing claims) come September.
Windows 7 should be better in terms of Battery Performance actually. They rewrote the kernel and scheduler for Windows 7 to let the CPU reach deeper sleep states which was impossible due to interrupts occurring every 8 ms or so.
Could you try to bench Win7 with some more going on like watching DVD? According to MS it should perform better then. Also Vista SP2 may behave differently from SP1 in terms of battery performance.
Can you look into or at least call THEM out on that too, Anand?
I've been shopping for a HDD dock for a long time now, and it's only taken this long because nobody can seem to provide one with eSATA that runs at 3.0gbps.
Win7 would do that only if Apple set up its drivers to do that. . .
Which I sincerely doubt they would do - Apple has no incentive to make a competitor's operating system perform well on their hardware. They want people to switch.
i was just wondering if the tests for windows was done by booting on windows, or by using VMware fusion or parallels? if you're just emulating windows, will that have an effect on battery life?
so it seems that by using windows, you'll have a higher power consumption? so is it safe to say, that the mac mini which was advertised to idle at 13W will have an increase in power consumption while running windows?
I think the reason why Mac OSX is fairing better in battery life is because the way it uses its resources. I am using a my Macbook right now Aand I noticed that if I open 10 browsers, Only the browser that is currently on the top screen is getting worked on. anything that I've minimized will be left alone, so less cpu cycles are being used. I know this for a fact because if I upload pictures on flickr and i minimize the browser it doesn't upload till the screen is on. Just the workload i guess. Windows always have something running in the background while OSX seems to halt programs I've noticed. Mind you I'm not a techie so I am not qualified to assess anything. This is just something I've noticed when using my stuff.
If patterns repeat themselves Anand, shouldn't we expect a big update on the MacBook Pro in October? In your recommendation should I wait to buy until October for a faster Intel chip or is this Summer update stellar??
I would take a pc laptop, your lenovo, for example, and install osx on it (assumeing it was compatible enough). It would be interesting to see if the opposite is true. maybe since the lenovo vista battery life is better than the mbp in vista, its osx life would also be better than the mbp.
No it's not good supporting evidence to that OPINION. Instead, it's comparing drivers made by Apple for its own operating system to drivers made by Apple for a competing operating system.
Do you THINK Apple would optimize hardware drivers to get the best performance for WINDOWS? Are you NUTS?
On my netbook, I got about 30mins less battery life out of Ubuntu 8.10 LPIA version than Windows XP when browsing the net wirelessly. Much of this was due to the lack of power saving features in the drivers for things like audio, WLAN etc. Also CPU usage was generally higher and stayed at 100% more of the time. Of course, it might not be the same with full featured laptops, but I have a feeling Linux is no more efficient than Windows due to the poor driver support.
It depends entirely on the driver support for your hardware and whether you compile the kernel yourself or whether you just use whatever some distro provides. With excellent manufacturer driver support and a self-compiled kernel, one should be able to obtain better battery life in linux than Windows XP. I mean, OS X IS based on freebsd, which is very similar to linux.
I know this is not what this article was about but I bought the MacBook Pro 17" back in March. I have been pretty pleased with it except for one thing. I find that even the shorter battery life under Vista is still very good life as I get about 4-5 hours on my battery under email and web surfing conditions. However, I do have one problem in Vista 64 Bit, I consistantly have lockups, this started after about 3-4 weeks of no problems. Under OS X I have yet to have a lock up so I am pretty sure it is a driver. It gets worse as time goes on. I believe it is a NIC (wireless most likely) issue and am wondering if anyone else has experianced this and if you were able to resolve it. Currently I am trying to isolate it by disabling the wireless controller under Vista. Any help from the Anandtech crew would be helpful.
I would be interested in a comparison with various distros of Linux (or just Ubuntu!) under gnome and KDE, using feature-comparable software (e.g. Rhythmbox and Epiphany/Firefox).
I mean, what on Earth would be responsible for such a huge discrepancy between OS X and (every brand of) Windows?
Apple has total access to all Mac BIOS info - something Vista don´t have. With this extra advantage, Apple can optimize MacOS X for maximum energy consumption - something Vista can´t. That´s the reason MacOS X will always have better battery life on Macs.
In an earlier article you mentionned optimization with the System Managment Controller chip that helps the battery life. I wonder if OS X turns it on and off when it starts.
Acer Aspire Timeline series is also capable of delivering "8 hours" of battery life at a low price. It's a CULV notebook, but it is quite interesting if you need so much battery life.
Would it be possible if the reason OS X has longer battery life compared to Vista was because of Apple "capped" the HD bandwith through software at 1.5Gb/s while Vista and Windows 7 are both running at 3.0Gb/s?
Perhaps there are legal issues with doing this, but for curiousity's sake, perhaps installing OSX on a "windows" notebook and testing to see if that causes it to have a longer battery life than running windows will determine if OSX uses less power or if OSX has hardware specific trickery going on to make the battery last longer.
Stupid thought, but have you considered, almost just for giggles, running your battery bench in a VM'ed copy of windows?
Most likely the battery life will be even lower..... but there's an ever so slight chance that os x is doing something tricky under the hood, and if so your battery life could increase. Even staying the same could be an indicator, with the VM overhead and such.
One reason Vista MAY have a shorter battery life is Microsoft's business model of backward compatibility. As I understand it, in order for MS to support the multitude of old software on it's new operating systems, MS codes and tests specifically for legacy applications. For example, if you want to run the original SIMS on Vista, the OS detects that SIMS is running and performs code specifically so that SIMS works.
The need for specific handling is two fold. The original OS function calls may not have behaved exactly as per the spec, so application developers coded for the actual behaviour provided by the OS. On the flip side, application developers may have developed code that functioned correctly, but were misusing the intended purpose of the OS function calls.
I remember reading that when Vista development was running late, that over 95% of the Vista code base was dedicated to supporting backward compatibility and that it was the biggest cause for delivery delay and restriction of functionality.
If my understanding is correct, then for any given call to the OS, a number of checks are being run for legacy software even when running current applications. This is a backward compatibility tax that we all pay, all the time. With every new release of MS operating system, this problem gets bigger and more complex, requiring more resources at design, code, test and run time. This MAY explain why battery life has reduced in Windows 7 more than Vista, which is intern worse than XP.
Apple reduces these problems in two ways. Firstly, they occasionally break backward compatibility support (e.g. OS-9 to OS-X in 2002). Also, their licensing and testing model for third party applications reduces the amount of "bad but functioning" applications that misuse the OS function calls.
Mind you, I'm not criticising MS for their backward compatibility support. It's what consumers and business have demanded from them and has made them very successful. It's just that the backward compatibility support back to DOS days has a cost for all of us, including MS.
Among the many flaws of Vista, and a major reason it was never widely adopted, is the fact that it wasn't backward compatible. I did buy a Vista laptop, but when fewer than half my applications would run on it, I returned it and bought an XP system. Try not making excuses for Micro$oft. They're a multi-billion dollar big boy and can defend themselves. When Micro$oft releases their new buggier, incompatible, operating systems we should instead ask 1)What does this offer thats worth the upfront cost, the time to install it, the time to install all my applications, 2) the cost to replace all my expensive applications that no longer work, 3) the time to find, purchase, and install all the applications that no longer work, 3) the time to learn yet another buggy and unintuitive interface, 4) the cost of new hardware and lower productiviity due to the poorer performance of the bloated and underperforming OS. 5) Does this OS perform the basic functions of an OS well such as disk storage management - Micro$oft has yet to get Windows explorer to work well.
The conclusion is that Micro$oft is not backward compatible, and their self-serving goal of making money hand over fist clashes with my desire for value for my money.
Interesting you think I'm defending MS. I'm not an MS fan. Far from it. In fact, after working as a developer for 20 years, MS was one of the big reasons I recently threw in the towel and have jumped ship into a brand new career, starting with 4 years back in University.
However, about Vista backwards compatibility... I'm not surprised not everything worked for you. On the whole, I imagine MS got quite a lot of things to work, but frankly they don't have a chance of getting all the 3rd party apps AND hardware combinations to work all the time. The permutations and combinations of the problem they are trying to solve is patently ridiculous beyond belief. Trying to get it to work is just silly and believing they can do it is gullible.
Having worked as a master engineer developing telecoms network software for the major firm in the indudtry for over 7 years, I've seen the rod built for it's back by one company where that company controlled every application and every hardware release. In addition, the required quality of all the releases was far beyond a consumer ALT-CTRL-DEL OS like Windows. The problems we had with backward compatibility were enormous. I think MS has NO chance, they don't control all the parts and don't have access to majority of application code or hardware designs. Frankly I think it's futile, BUT, we all expect it of them and they keep promising it.
What software didn't work? Pretty much everything I had running on XP ran in Vista. I say pretty much, because, while I can't think of a single program that didn't run, it's been over 2 years since I installed Vista.
I don't run Industrial CADD/CAM software, so that might be it, but those programs were always problematic with an OS change. They are typically certified on a specific hardware/software combo. Other than that, Vista was (I run Win 7 RC at the moment) amazingly backwards compatible as well as stable. After SP1, even better. The "Vista is teh suxor" FUD is getting real old now.
One of the things that annoys me more than almost anything else about Vista on my desktop machine (on which I also run XP sometimes) is its incessant churning of the hard drive -- I don't know what it has to do so much with the hard drive, but it annoys the hell out of me. Does it do this on laptops as well? That would be a sure way to kill the battery life.
Weird that your X300 battery life results are so low.
I consistently get 4-4.5 hrs of wifi browsing with my X300 (6-cell battery, 6 mo. old, 99% of original battery capacity according to thinkpad Power Manager). Not though that I do use mainly Opera+Flashblock, which might factor into it. Vista SP1 and SP2 both have the same battery life for me. Then again, I've also implemented several SSD tweaks such as turning off Indexing and Superfetch, both of which should trim power usage.
Apple has not done a good job of keeping the Vista drivers up to date. I'm using the Snow Leopard Boot Camp beta drivers with Windows 7 and they are much better. My gues is that you will have to upgrade to Snow Leopard to get netter Boot camp drivers.
SSD depends on NCQ to keep a smooth flow of commands in order to maximise performance and efficiency. Without SATA2 there is no NCQ so who is to say that these high performance SSD will even be able to reach their rated performance let alone hit the SATA1 bottleneck?
Besides, the SATA link has overheads in the region of 5% to 10% so the cap comes at around 130MB/s not 150. I think some 7200rpm disks will be very close to this limit.
And times you'll benefit from the 3.0G bandwidth (listed only if in minutes):
-Defragmenting your SSD
-Dumping your >18GB of RAM to your SSD.
-Enlarging your e-penis
Anything that requires processing is likely to be bottle-necked by algorithms and the processor more than the SATA interface.
Also: I'd be interested to see how a very good Hackintosh performs in comparison to it's native Vista counterpart. That would definitely confirm/deny an architectural advantage, or something fishy.
Except that SSDs do not use NCQ the way HDDs do therefore your entire argument is pointless. I think the performance specs given by manufacturers for their SSDs rely on NCQ to keep the SSD controller fed with enough instructions in order to achieve said performance.
there only way to prove it is to test on SATA and SATA2 but from the little I have read on SSDs, the NCQ is actually important for them.
Okay, I'm having a hard time understanding you. I think you meant to say that SATA-I doesn't have NCQ. You're wrong in that case, as the 925X SATA-I chipset does support NCQ, and does show a notable difference in benchmark. The NCQ support does not drop just because it's an SSD.
Maybe you mean to say that "the NCQ is actually important for {SSDs}", which I completely agree with.
I'm confused by your statement that "SSDs do not use NCQ the way HDDs do." What exactly do you mean? Are you referring to the mechanical aspect of most-efficient path of an HDD versus the command queue of an SSD? That somehow the gains made by always having a task queued is different between them, and having SATA-II fixes this?
The biggest bottle-neck for these laptops isn't the SATA-I interface taking out precious literal seconds from their productivity, it's all the hours of whining.
For the moment the Sata 1,5 Gbps speed issue is not that crucial.
In order to be able to take advantage of a faster read capability than 1.5 Gbps you have to be able to write the data to somewhere else with the same speed. Sure there is SSDs which sequential write speed exceeds 1,5 Gbps but not that many nor they do it that much faster than 1.5 Gbps. Not to mention that there isn't any HDD anywhere near this kind of write speeds.
Having said that I still have to wonder why Apple is doing this. It seems so pointless to cause all the BS around this issue for nothing. Not to mention that in the (near) future this "problem" has to be taken care of as the SSD technology takes it's giant leaps. AND like said it is already today possible to find and put in SSDs to your notebook that will take a hit from a too slow Sata interface.
"In order to be able to take advantage of a faster read capability than 1.5 Gbps you have to be able to write the data to somewhere else"
For example, RAM. Read performance is what counts for loading times of just about everything. But in fairness, 1.5Gbps is pretty fast for a single drive even if it is capable of more.
The difference between Windows and OS X could IMHO be partially explained by their different schedulers. A quanta based scheduler like in Windows has to keep at least one core running. In OS X it would in theory be possible to sleep until next interrupt. I doubt this is the actual reason for most of the difference, but it is quite possible OS X really has an architectural edge when it comes to power efficiency.
As for the SATA issue, it is a non-issue. While it is possible to install a drive that can read faster than that, it is infeasible to install anything to a laptop that actually uses data faster than that on a sustained and significantly frequent basis. There are some video and signal processing applications that can do it, but only a complete moron would run them on a laptop or indeed anything without significantly more RAM than any consumer level laptop can support.
It WAS only infeasible because laptop HDD performance was so lacking. What else can benefit? How about booting? Saving to hiberfile. Loading a game.
It is untrue that there aren't constant gains, disk I/O is one of the biggest bottlenecks in typical laptop use. I'm not suggesting it wouldn't run great with the same SSD in SATA150 mode, but if you're paying a premium you should at least get something premium for the money.
Apparently someone (MacRumours, I believe) is reporting that Macs shipped with the built-to-order SSD option are seeing 3.0 Gbps on the SATA interface.
This is all very shady, but it sounds like someone should be able to find the switch to flip (whether it's in firmware or what) to gain 3.0 Gbps mode for those of us upgrading the internal drive to an SSD.
As far as I can tell, it is literally impossible to get Vista to stop using the disk long enough for it to spin down. Turn off every non-critical service, kill Explorer and every application, and the core OS and required services will still touch the disk once or twice a second.
If OSX can actually sit still for a moment and be happy with what it has in RAM, that may contribute to the different battery performance on the same hardware.
Yes, but what about XP? You can easily make the hard drive spin down under XP, yet older reviews comparing Macs under XP and OSX show similar results.
When idle, a Macbook with a full Core2 CPU running OSX uses about as much power as an Atom netbook running XP. No PC laptop running any version of Windows comes close. Got to give credit where credit is due, Apple has really done a great job optimizing the whole platform (OS and hardware) for fantastic battery life. Either that, or Microsoft and its partners have done a horrible job.
I originally guessed that this was done intentionally to maximize battery life but since 3Gb/s is baked into the 9400m would this still cut power draw? I suspect that this is still the case as I highly doubt it was an accident and there is no evidence I'm aware of pointing to an OS/Driver bug. While this will limit top speeds I doubt that the user experience will be affected perceptibly.
You can manually choose Vista power saving option. When forced on maximum power saving, the laptop should run at SpeedStep freq. You guys need to do that test again by forced power saving under vista and see how long it runs this time.
even those using SSD,
SSD benefit is in low latency, faster random operations, this makes the user happy,
Sequential 200MB/s is a bonus but not the main value to the user!
Except that people pay more for higher SSD performance (SSDs performing beyond 150MB/s cost more than those that don't, and better random I/O also translates into more frequent peaks above 150) so if they don't get that they will want to pay less or receive a refund.
I don't know about Safari, but iTunes on Windows is resource intensive. A fairer test might be to test Windows with IE and WMP for comparison. I would be interested to see these results.
OSX comes with Safari/iTunes; Vista/Win7 comes with IE/WMP. Not comparing the OS's with their standard programs seems a little biased - you've effectively given the Mac a homefield advantage.
I doubt it will make much difference, but in the interest of fair play I too would like to see the tests redone.
iTunes gets terrible performance in Windows. If that is part of your tests, it's not going to be a fair fight. Something lightweight (like Winamp Lite) or something native (like WMP) would be a better apples-to-apples comparison.
It's sort of like running a non-native application inside a emulator and expecting the performance/effeciency to be the same.
//waiting for some fanboy to try and use this test as "evidence" that OSX is better than Windows...
//awesome battery power, way to go apple!
//still dont like the non-removable battery. Proprietary 5 point screws to ensure you dont change the battery..tsk, tsk.
//my Dell XPS M1710 can barely get through a 2 hour movie before the battery dies...it's a desktop replacement, so I have no problem running it on a wire.
Those screws are just Torx screws. You can easly find Torx screwdrivers anywhere.
Btw, after working with them and Phillips screws, I wish all the screws were Torx. Those Phillips screws get stripped so easily.
In contrast, all the hard drives I've taken apart, even their tiny screws, as tight as they were put in (via air screwdrivers), all come out without stripping.
The SATA 1.5Gbps issue on the new 13" and 15" Macbook Pro is even more SEVERE than expected.
(The 17" Macbook Pro, white 13" Macbook, and 13" Macbook Air all have SATA 3.0Gbps so are not affected.)
I'm not sure about all the variables in play here, but for whatever reason (perhaps due to different points of overhead and/or controller architecture) people using fast SSDs on the new Macbook Pro 13" and 15" are seeing them bottlenecked at far less than 150MB/sec.
Here are some preliminary results for sequential read and write speeds from a new 15" Macbook Pro versus the older using an OCZ 120GB Vertex:
Test: Sequential File Read and Write Throughput
App: HD Tune Pro 3.50
Drive: OCZ Vertex 128GB (MLC)
Old MB Pro 15" (same SATA II as 13" MBA/13" MB/17" MB Pro)
Bottom line, if this is a hardware problem that can't be corrected by firmware, Apple REALLY SCREWED UP. Although you'll still get the benefits of fast random access in the OS and applicaitons, The SATA I in the new 13"/15" MB Pro will cause an enormous performance degradation when copying large files or transferring large files to and from external drives --- on the order of losing >50% of your throughput!
How is this going to limit any transfers to or from an external drive? The fastest external interface on these machines is the 800 Mbps Firewire (1394b) interface. That is way below (after subtracting overhead) the 115 MBps and 95 Mbps maximum you give. Thus I don't see any reduction in the read/write to an external drive let alone the >50% you claim.
External devices aren't the problem; the problem is internal SATA drives running at half their designed bandwidth. That said, how much file copying (i.e. sequential transfers) do you do on a regular basis? Even if those situations are half as fast as they could be (and they're more like 60-70% as fast), I don't think I copy large files around on my HDD much at all, and if you only have a single HDD it's mostly a non-issue. Still doesn't make sense, though.
no, its a BIOS/EFI setting then if both OSes cannot operate at 3gb. The 3gb speed has been out for years, and other MacBooks have no issue with operating at 3gb.
Have you though about wiring the new MBP battery to the old MBP? I'd like to see just how much of a difference the battery makes. Seems like the new MBP has some extra optimizations.
Just wanted to mention that Apple has already issued a firmware update that has corrected the SATA problem and enabled SATA/3.0Gbps functionality on all new MB Pros...
This is the base $1699 model, there's no 9600M unfortunately. The results echo what I've seen in the past with OS X vs. Vista, it's just nice to have an update. Hopefully we can get a real response from Microsoft this time.
Wow, that is a shame. I was looking at purchasing one of these (first saving) for school. It would be nice to go ~7 hours without a charger on campus. I suspect most of the tools I use are Windows only though (I am almost certain).
There is a real lack of good Windows PCs in the market. Nothing with battery life near as good, or a body construction out of one nice block of metal. My piece of crap Dell Inspiron 1520 is literally falling apart at this point. I have had 5 repairs on it. I suffered from the faulty 8600M GT, then my motherboard went bad, then my ram went bad, then my LCD flickered, now my casing is getting small cracks....
What is one to do!?! I might just settle for lab computers at this point :( It would be cheaper.
I paid ~1800 for my Inspiron. That is pretty much in line with the MBP. It was one of the first to have the Santa Rosa chipset.
And yes, I would think that Apple Macbook Pros are higher quality, since they use a metal casing and not plastic. Plus innovative battery technologies. I have never owned one though, I could be wrong. They feel nice in the store.
I know that on my 17" Unibody Pro Vista uses the 9600M which does chew up the battery life. Vista support isn't really that great... It took me about a week to get it really stable and even then I still have to attach a mouse to get right clicks to work properly. I didn't think the power usage was just due to the OS, but mainly from the use of the 9600M. Looks like there is even more of a battery tax for using Vista (I currently mostly use OS X, but eventually might do more).
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jpkang - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
There are a few reports on Twitter (http://bit.ly/10rc69">http://bit.ly/10rc69, but some right after WWDC that are not currently appearing in search results) that Snow Leopard has dramatically increased battery life. I'm curious to see how much of an impact it will have on real-life battery results (let alone marketing claims) come September.Eventide - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
Windows 7 should be better in terms of Battery Performance actually. They rewrote the kernel and scheduler for Windows 7 to let the CPU reach deeper sleep states which was impossible due to interrupts occurring every 8 ms or so.Could you try to bench Win7 with some more going on like watching DVD? According to MS it should perform better then. Also Vista SP2 may behave differently from SP1 in terms of battery performance.
blufire - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
...addresses the SATA issue.http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacBook_Pro_EFI...">http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacBook_Pro_EFI...
purezerg - Sunday, June 21, 2009 - link
hmm. I installed OSX on my laptop and OSX was 3hrs when it's 8hrs with vista.Deusfaux - Thursday, June 18, 2009 - link
...instead of their advertised 3.0gbps.Can you look into or at least call THEM out on that too, Anand?
I've been shopping for a HDD dock for a long time now, and it's only taken this long because nobody can seem to provide one with eSATA that runs at 3.0gbps.
majortom1981 - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
I am thinking that its a drivers issue on using windows on a mac and battery life.Do you honestly expect apple to let windows on their hardware get better batterylife then osx?
I would think its a drivers issue and not how the OS is programmed.
My laptop automatically underclocks itself, dims the screen and other things under vista and windows 7. Does windows 7 do these things on a mac pro?
TEAMSWITCHER - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
He tested a Lenovo X300 which is similar to the Mac Book Air and got similar results in Vista. So Lenovo must have some pretty bad drivers as well.SoCalBoomer - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
Win7 would do that only if Apple set up its drivers to do that. . .Which I sincerely doubt they would do - Apple has no incentive to make a competitor's operating system perform well on their hardware. They want people to switch.
dolcolax - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
i was just wondering if the tests for windows was done by booting on windows, or by using VMware fusion or parallels? if you're just emulating windows, will that have an effect on battery life?so it seems that by using windows, you'll have a higher power consumption? so is it safe to say, that the mac mini which was advertised to idle at 13W will have an increase in power consumption while running windows?
gourygabriev - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
I think the reason why Mac OSX is fairing better in battery life is because the way it uses its resources. I am using a my Macbook right now Aand I noticed that if I open 10 browsers, Only the browser that is currently on the top screen is getting worked on. anything that I've minimized will be left alone, so less cpu cycles are being used. I know this for a fact because if I upload pictures on flickr and i minimize the browser it doesn't upload till the screen is on. Just the workload i guess. Windows always have something running in the background while OSX seems to halt programs I've noticed. Mind you I'm not a techie so I am not qualified to assess anything. This is just something I've noticed when using my stuff.bspeck1 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
If patterns repeat themselves Anand, shouldn't we expect a big update on the MacBook Pro in October? In your recommendation should I wait to buy until October for a faster Intel chip or is this Summer update stellar??sadffffff - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
I would take a pc laptop, your lenovo, for example, and install osx on it (assumeing it was compatible enough). It would be interesting to see if the opposite is true. maybe since the lenovo vista battery life is better than the mbp in vista, its osx life would also be better than the mbp.crispbp04 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Apple hardware optimized for Apple operating systems, and then comparing it to Vista running on the same device? Confused.flybefree - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Here's your answer - we all know that Windows is completely bloated, inefficient operating system. Isn't this good supporting evidence to the fact?SoCalBoomer - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
No it's not good supporting evidence to that OPINION. Instead, it's comparing drivers made by Apple for its own operating system to drivers made by Apple for a competing operating system.Do you THINK Apple would optimize hardware drivers to get the best performance for WINDOWS? Are you NUTS?
JimmiG - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
On my netbook, I got about 30mins less battery life out of Ubuntu 8.10 LPIA version than Windows XP when browsing the net wirelessly. Much of this was due to the lack of power saving features in the drivers for things like audio, WLAN etc. Also CPU usage was generally higher and stayed at 100% more of the time. Of course, it might not be the same with full featured laptops, but I have a feeling Linux is no more efficient than Windows due to the poor driver support.nortexoid - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
It depends entirely on the driver support for your hardware and whether you compile the kernel yourself or whether you just use whatever some distro provides. With excellent manufacturer driver support and a self-compiled kernel, one should be able to obtain better battery life in linux than Windows XP. I mean, OS X IS based on freebsd, which is very similar to linux.SgtTech - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
I know this is not what this article was about but I bought the MacBook Pro 17" back in March. I have been pretty pleased with it except for one thing. I find that even the shorter battery life under Vista is still very good life as I get about 4-5 hours on my battery under email and web surfing conditions. However, I do have one problem in Vista 64 Bit, I consistantly have lockups, this started after about 3-4 weeks of no problems. Under OS X I have yet to have a lock up so I am pretty sure it is a driver. It gets worse as time goes on. I believe it is a NIC (wireless most likely) issue and am wondering if anyone else has experianced this and if you were able to resolve it. Currently I am trying to isolate it by disabling the wireless controller under Vista. Any help from the Anandtech crew would be helpful.nortexoid - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
I would be interested in a comparison with various distros of Linux (or just Ubuntu!) under gnome and KDE, using feature-comparable software (e.g. Rhythmbox and Epiphany/Firefox).I mean, what on Earth would be responsible for such a huge discrepancy between OS X and (every brand of) Windows?
MRC554 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Apple has total access to all Mac BIOS info - something Vista don´t have. With this extra advantage, Apple can optimize MacOS X for maximum energy consumption - something Vista can´t. That´s the reason MacOS X will always have better battery life on Macs.Narcofis - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
In an earlier article you mentionned optimization with the System Managment Controller chip that helps the battery life. I wonder if OS X turns it on and off when it starts.Just wondering.
thorgal73 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
I remember OCZ slowing down its Mac version of the Vertex drive, so went to look up a news post about it :http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/4/9/ocz-...">http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/20...use-mac-...
On the other hand I'd still like to know which mobile chipsets do offer speeds higher than SATA150, in practice. Here's a post about that :
http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f22/mobile-chip...">http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f22/...e-ssds-f...
Maybe you guys can figure this out ?
pmonti80 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Acer Aspire Timeline series is also capable of delivering "8 hours" of battery life at a low price. It's a CULV notebook, but it is quite interesting if you need so much battery life.abs0lut3 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Hi Anand,Would it be possible if the reason OS X has longer battery life compared to Vista was because of Apple "capped" the HD bandwith through software at 1.5Gb/s while Vista and Windows 7 are both running at 3.0Gb/s?
unfalliblekrutch - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Perhaps there are legal issues with doing this, but for curiousity's sake, perhaps installing OSX on a "windows" notebook and testing to see if that causes it to have a longer battery life than running windows will determine if OSX uses less power or if OSX has hardware specific trickery going on to make the battery last longer.Methodical - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Stupid thought, but have you considered, almost just for giggles, running your battery bench in a VM'ed copy of windows?Most likely the battery life will be even lower..... but there's an ever so slight chance that os x is doing something tricky under the hood, and if so your battery life could increase. Even staying the same could be an indicator, with the VM overhead and such.
gcor - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
One reason Vista MAY have a shorter battery life is Microsoft's business model of backward compatibility. As I understand it, in order for MS to support the multitude of old software on it's new operating systems, MS codes and tests specifically for legacy applications. For example, if you want to run the original SIMS on Vista, the OS detects that SIMS is running and performs code specifically so that SIMS works.The need for specific handling is two fold. The original OS function calls may not have behaved exactly as per the spec, so application developers coded for the actual behaviour provided by the OS. On the flip side, application developers may have developed code that functioned correctly, but were misusing the intended purpose of the OS function calls.
I remember reading that when Vista development was running late, that over 95% of the Vista code base was dedicated to supporting backward compatibility and that it was the biggest cause for delivery delay and restriction of functionality.
If my understanding is correct, then for any given call to the OS, a number of checks are being run for legacy software even when running current applications. This is a backward compatibility tax that we all pay, all the time. With every new release of MS operating system, this problem gets bigger and more complex, requiring more resources at design, code, test and run time. This MAY explain why battery life has reduced in Windows 7 more than Vista, which is intern worse than XP.
Apple reduces these problems in two ways. Firstly, they occasionally break backward compatibility support (e.g. OS-9 to OS-X in 2002). Also, their licensing and testing model for third party applications reduces the amount of "bad but functioning" applications that misuse the OS function calls.
Mind you, I'm not criticising MS for their backward compatibility support. It's what consumers and business have demanded from them and has made them very successful. It's just that the backward compatibility support back to DOS days has a cost for all of us, including MS.
CompOne - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Among the many flaws of Vista, and a major reason it was never widely adopted, is the fact that it wasn't backward compatible. I did buy a Vista laptop, but when fewer than half my applications would run on it, I returned it and bought an XP system. Try not making excuses for Micro$oft. They're a multi-billion dollar big boy and can defend themselves. When Micro$oft releases their new buggier, incompatible, operating systems we should instead ask 1)What does this offer thats worth the upfront cost, the time to install it, the time to install all my applications, 2) the cost to replace all my expensive applications that no longer work, 3) the time to find, purchase, and install all the applications that no longer work, 3) the time to learn yet another buggy and unintuitive interface, 4) the cost of new hardware and lower productiviity due to the poorer performance of the bloated and underperforming OS. 5) Does this OS perform the basic functions of an OS well such as disk storage management - Micro$oft has yet to get Windows explorer to work well.The conclusion is that Micro$oft is not backward compatible, and their self-serving goal of making money hand over fist clashes with my desire for value for my money.
gcor - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
Interesting you think I'm defending MS. I'm not an MS fan. Far from it. In fact, after working as a developer for 20 years, MS was one of the big reasons I recently threw in the towel and have jumped ship into a brand new career, starting with 4 years back in University.However, about Vista backwards compatibility... I'm not surprised not everything worked for you. On the whole, I imagine MS got quite a lot of things to work, but frankly they don't have a chance of getting all the 3rd party apps AND hardware combinations to work all the time. The permutations and combinations of the problem they are trying to solve is patently ridiculous beyond belief. Trying to get it to work is just silly and believing they can do it is gullible.
Having worked as a master engineer developing telecoms network software for the major firm in the indudtry for over 7 years, I've seen the rod built for it's back by one company where that company controlled every application and every hardware release. In addition, the required quality of all the releases was far beyond a consumer ALT-CTRL-DEL OS like Windows. The problems we had with backward compatibility were enormous. I think MS has NO chance, they don't control all the parts and don't have access to majority of application code or hardware designs. Frankly I think it's futile, BUT, we all expect it of them and they keep promising it.
PhreePhly - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
What software didn't work? Pretty much everything I had running on XP ran in Vista. I say pretty much, because, while I can't think of a single program that didn't run, it's been over 2 years since I installed Vista.I don't run Industrial CADD/CAM software, so that might be it, but those programs were always problematic with an OS change. They are typically certified on a specific hardware/software combo. Other than that, Vista was (I run Win 7 RC at the moment) amazingly backwards compatible as well as stable. After SP1, even better. The "Vista is teh suxor" FUD is getting real old now.
PhreePhly
androticus - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
One of the things that annoys me more than almost anything else about Vista on my desktop machine (on which I also run XP sometimes) is its incessant churning of the hard drive -- I don't know what it has to do so much with the hard drive, but it annoys the hell out of me. Does it do this on laptops as well? That would be a sure way to kill the battery life.sprockkets - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Indexing services are turned off when on power saver mode, which of course gets activated when you are on battery.Pirks - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Doesn't helpVoldenuit - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Weird that your X300 battery life results are so low.I consistently get 4-4.5 hrs of wifi browsing with my X300 (6-cell battery, 6 mo. old, 99% of original battery capacity according to thinkpad Power Manager). Not though that I do use mainly Opera+Flashblock, which might factor into it. Vista SP1 and SP2 both have the same battery life for me. Then again, I've also implemented several SSD tweaks such as turning off Indexing and Superfetch, both of which should trim power usage.
snookie - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Apple has not done a good job of keeping the Vista drivers up to date. I'm using the Snow Leopard Boot Camp beta drivers with Windows 7 and they are much better. My gues is that you will have to upgrade to Snow Leopard to get netter Boot camp drivers.vailr - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Snow Leopard Boot Camp drivers:http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1956440/6097...">http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1956440/6097...
deputc26 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
in relation to above statement while the performance will be affected I doubt that any will notice it.deputc26 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
"you have to be able to write the data to somewhere else with the same speed" ...RAMfsardis - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
SSD depends on NCQ to keep a smooth flow of commands in order to maximise performance and efficiency. Without SATA2 there is no NCQ so who is to say that these high performance SSD will even be able to reach their rated performance let alone hit the SATA1 bottleneck?Besides, the SATA link has overheads in the region of 5% to 10% so the cap comes at around 130MB/s not 150. I think some 7200rpm disks will be very close to this limit.
Samatros - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
"Without SATA2 there is no NCQ"http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
^The Intel 925X chipset was SATA I, and was what TH used to test the benefits of NCQ:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/command-queuin...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/command-queuin...
And times you'll benefit from the 3.0G bandwidth (listed only if in minutes):
-Defragmenting your SSD
-Dumping your >18GB of RAM to your SSD.
-Enlarging your e-penis
Anything that requires processing is likely to be bottle-necked by algorithms and the processor more than the SATA interface.
Also: I'd be interested to see how a very good Hackintosh performs in comparison to it's native Vista counterpart. That would definitely confirm/deny an architectural advantage, or something fishy.
fsardis - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Except that SSDs do not use NCQ the way HDDs do therefore your entire argument is pointless. I think the performance specs given by manufacturers for their SSDs rely on NCQ to keep the SSD controller fed with enough instructions in order to achieve said performance.there only way to prove it is to test on SATA and SATA2 but from the little I have read on SSDs, the NCQ is actually important for them.
Samatros - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Okay, I'm having a hard time understanding you. I think you meant to say that SATA-I doesn't have NCQ. You're wrong in that case, as the 925X SATA-I chipset does support NCQ, and does show a notable difference in benchmark. The NCQ support does not drop just because it's an SSD.Maybe you mean to say that "the NCQ is actually important for {SSDs}", which I completely agree with.
I'm confused by your statement that "SSDs do not use NCQ the way HDDs do." What exactly do you mean? Are you referring to the mechanical aspect of most-efficient path of an HDD versus the command queue of an SSD? That somehow the gains made by always having a task queued is different between them, and having SATA-II fixes this?
The biggest bottle-neck for these laptops isn't the SATA-I interface taking out precious literal seconds from their productivity, it's all the hours of whining.
rundll - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
For the moment the Sata 1,5 Gbps speed issue is not that crucial.In order to be able to take advantage of a faster read capability than 1.5 Gbps you have to be able to write the data to somewhere else with the same speed. Sure there is SSDs which sequential write speed exceeds 1,5 Gbps but not that many nor they do it that much faster than 1.5 Gbps. Not to mention that there isn't any HDD anywhere near this kind of write speeds.
Having said that I still have to wonder why Apple is doing this. It seems so pointless to cause all the BS around this issue for nothing. Not to mention that in the (near) future this "problem" has to be taken care of as the SSD technology takes it's giant leaps. AND like said it is already today possible to find and put in SSDs to your notebook that will take a hit from a too slow Sata interface.
BushLin - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
"In order to be able to take advantage of a faster read capability than 1.5 Gbps you have to be able to write the data to somewhere else"For example, RAM. Read performance is what counts for loading times of just about everything. But in fairness, 1.5Gbps is pretty fast for a single drive even if it is capable of more.
Ailurophobe - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
The difference between Windows and OS X could IMHO be partially explained by their different schedulers. A quanta based scheduler like in Windows has to keep at least one core running. In OS X it would in theory be possible to sleep until next interrupt. I doubt this is the actual reason for most of the difference, but it is quite possible OS X really has an architectural edge when it comes to power efficiency.As for the SATA issue, it is a non-issue. While it is possible to install a drive that can read faster than that, it is infeasible to install anything to a laptop that actually uses data faster than that on a sustained and significantly frequent basis. There are some video and signal processing applications that can do it, but only a complete moron would run them on a laptop or indeed anything without significantly more RAM than any consumer level laptop can support.
mindless1 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
It WAS only infeasible because laptop HDD performance was so lacking. What else can benefit? How about booting? Saving to hiberfile. Loading a game.It is untrue that there aren't constant gains, disk I/O is one of the biggest bottlenecks in typical laptop use. I'm not suggesting it wouldn't run great with the same SSD in SATA150 mode, but if you're paying a premium you should at least get something premium for the money.
evilspoons - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Apparently someone (MacRumours, I believe) is reporting that Macs shipped with the built-to-order SSD option are seeing 3.0 Gbps on the SATA interface.This is all very shady, but it sounds like someone should be able to find the switch to flip (whether it's in firmware or what) to gain 3.0 Gbps mode for those of us upgrading the internal drive to an SSD.
BrooksT - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
As far as I can tell, it is literally impossible to get Vista to stop using the disk long enough for it to spin down. Turn off every non-critical service, kill Explorer and every application, and the core OS and required services will still touch the disk once or twice a second.If OSX can actually sit still for a moment and be happy with what it has in RAM, that may contribute to the different battery performance on the same hardware.
JimmiG - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Yes, but what about XP? You can easily make the hard drive spin down under XP, yet older reviews comparing Macs under XP and OSX show similar results.When idle, a Macbook with a full Core2 CPU running OSX uses about as much power as an Atom netbook running XP. No PC laptop running any version of Windows comes close. Got to give credit where credit is due, Apple has really done a great job optimizing the whole platform (OS and hardware) for fantastic battery life. Either that, or Microsoft and its partners have done a horrible job.
Pirks - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Bothdeputc26 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
The faster you drain a battery the less total energy you will be able to extract from it which is why a 50% increase in capacity will result in a slightly greater than 50% increase in battery life see any load vs. capacity graph here is a page with many: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php...">http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php...I originally guessed that this was done intentionally to maximize battery life but since 3Gb/s is baked into the 9400m would this still cut power draw? I suspect that this is still the case as I highly doubt it was an accident and there is no evidence I'm aware of pointing to an OS/Driver bug. While this will limit top speeds I doubt that the user experience will be affected perceptibly.
AvalancheDiode - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
You can manually choose Vista power saving option. When forced on maximum power saving, the laptop should run at SpeedStep freq. You guys need to do that test again by forced power saving under vista and see how long it runs this time.MamiyaOtaru - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
"I even chose the maximum power saving profile under Vista" from page one of TFA.motigez - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
HiSATA 1.5Gb/s vs. SATA 3.0Gb/s,
The end user will not care!!!
benchmarks may vary but for a client user SATA 1.5Gb/s is enough taking into account you have enough IOPS. (random access)
UltraWide - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
most people won't care, except those that are running SSDs and want their hardware to work as advertised. :)motigez - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
even those using SSD,SSD benefit is in low latency, faster random operations, this makes the user happy,
Sequential 200MB/s is a bonus but not the main value to the user!
mindless1 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Except that people pay more for higher SSD performance (SSDs performing beyond 150MB/s cost more than those that don't, and better random I/O also translates into more frequent peaks above 150) so if they don't get that they will want to pay less or receive a refund.aeternitas - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Im a user, and it doesnt matter if thats the main value. Its the second most important thing!foggytown - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
I don't know about Safari, but iTunes on Windows is resource intensive. A fairer test might be to test Windows with IE and WMP for comparison. I would be interested to see these results.GeorgeH - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
+1OSX comes with Safari/iTunes; Vista/Win7 comes with IE/WMP. Not comparing the OS's with their standard programs seems a little biased - you've effectively given the Mac a homefield advantage.
I doubt it will make much difference, but in the interest of fair play I too would like to see the tests redone.
StraightPipe - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Came here to say this.iTunes gets terrible performance in Windows. If that is part of your tests, it's not going to be a fair fight. Something lightweight (like Winamp Lite) or something native (like WMP) would be a better apples-to-apples comparison.
It's sort of like running a non-native application inside a emulator and expecting the performance/effeciency to be the same.
//waiting for some fanboy to try and use this test as "evidence" that OSX is better than Windows...
//awesome battery power, way to go apple!
//still dont like the non-removable battery. Proprietary 5 point screws to ensure you dont change the battery..tsk, tsk.
//my Dell XPS M1710 can barely get through a 2 hour movie before the battery dies...it's a desktop replacement, so I have no problem running it on a wire.
sprockkets - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Those screws are just Torx screws. You can easly find Torx screwdrivers anywhere.Btw, after working with them and Phillips screws, I wish all the screws were Torx. Those Phillips screws get stripped so easily.
In contrast, all the hard drives I've taken apart, even their tiny screws, as tight as they were put in (via air screwdrivers), all come out without stripping.
slashbinslashbash - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Nope. Torx uses 6-pointed stars. These are 5-pointed stars.sprockkets - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Well, at least the top one was...DigitalFreak - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
There have been people who've installed Win7 on the new Macbook Pro and it still only runs at 1.5g. Definitely not an OSX problem.winterspan - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
The SATA 1.5Gbps issue on the new 13" and 15" Macbook Pro is even more SEVERE than expected.(The 17" Macbook Pro, white 13" Macbook, and 13" Macbook Air all have SATA 3.0Gbps so are not affected.)
I'm not sure about all the variables in play here, but for whatever reason (perhaps due to different points of overhead and/or controller architecture) people using fast SSDs on the new Macbook Pro 13" and 15" are seeing them bottlenecked at far less than 150MB/sec.
Here are some preliminary results for sequential read and write speeds from a new 15" Macbook Pro versus the older using an OCZ 120GB Vertex:
Test: Sequential File Read and Write Throughput
App: HD Tune Pro 3.50
Drive: OCZ Vertex 128GB (MLC)
Old MB Pro 15" (same SATA II as 13" MBA/13" MB/17" MB Pro)
Sequential READ = 225 MB/sec
Sequential WRITE = 180 MB/sec
New 13" and 15" MB Pro (SATA I)
Sequential READ = 115 MB/sec
Sequential WRITE = 95 MB/sec
Bottom line, if this is a hardware problem that can't be corrected by firmware, Apple REALLY SCREWED UP. Although you'll still get the benefits of fast random access in the OS and applicaitons, The SATA I in the new 13"/15" MB Pro will cause an enormous performance degradation when copying large files or transferring large files to and from external drives --- on the order of losing >50% of your throughput!
Shadowself - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
How is this going to limit any transfers to or from an external drive? The fastest external interface on these machines is the 800 Mbps Firewire (1394b) interface. That is way below (after subtracting overhead) the 115 MBps and 95 Mbps maximum you give. Thus I don't see any reduction in the read/write to an external drive let alone the >50% you claim.JarredWalton - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
External devices aren't the problem; the problem is internal SATA drives running at half their designed bandwidth. That said, how much file copying (i.e. sequential transfers) do you do on a regular basis? Even if those situations are half as fast as they could be (and they're more like 60-70% as fast), I don't think I copy large files around on my HDD much at all, and if you only have a single HDD it's mostly a non-issue. Still doesn't make sense, though.Fallen Kell - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Its not OS but DRIVER problems, which in a sense, still is an OS specific issue.sprockkets - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
no, its a BIOS/EFI setting then if both OSes cannot operate at 3gb. The 3gb speed has been out for years, and other MacBooks have no issue with operating at 3gb.mitocho - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Have you though about wiring the new MBP battery to the old MBP? I'd like to see just how much of a difference the battery makes. Seems like the new MBP has some extra optimizations.winterspan - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
Just wanted to mention that Apple has already issued a firmware update that has corrected the SATA problem and enabled SATA/3.0Gbps functionality on all new MB Pros...Intelman07 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Did you get the optional 9400M + 9600M GT? I think Windows will run the discrete 9600M GT instead of the 9400M integrated card.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
This is the base $1699 model, there's no 9600M unfortunately. The results echo what I've seen in the past with OS X vs. Vista, it's just nice to have an update. Hopefully we can get a real response from Microsoft this time.Take care,
Anand
sprockkets - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
Take a look at what the .7 update to 10.5 is doing for these Mac people.http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums?a=dl&am...">http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/for...=dl&...
Intelman07 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Wow, that is a shame. I was looking at purchasing one of these (first saving) for school. It would be nice to go ~7 hours without a charger on campus. I suspect most of the tools I use are Windows only though (I am almost certain).There is a real lack of good Windows PCs in the market. Nothing with battery life near as good, or a body construction out of one nice block of metal. My piece of crap Dell Inspiron 1520 is literally falling apart at this point. I have had 5 repairs on it. I suffered from the faulty 8600M GT, then my motherboard went bad, then my ram went bad, then my LCD flickered, now my casing is getting small cracks....
What is one to do!?! I might just settle for lab computers at this point :( It would be cheaper.
teohhanhui - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Isn't Inspiron in a totally different price range?Intelman07 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
I paid ~1800 for my Inspiron. That is pretty much in line with the MBP. It was one of the first to have the Santa Rosa chipset.And yes, I would think that Apple Macbook Pros are higher quality, since they use a metal casing and not plastic. Plus innovative battery technologies. I have never owned one though, I could be wrong. They feel nice in the store.
Pirks - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Are you saying that Macs are more expensive because of higher quality, and not because of the shiny logo?Fallen Kell - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
I know that on my 17" Unibody Pro Vista uses the 9600M which does chew up the battery life. Vista support isn't really that great... It took me about a week to get it really stable and even then I still have to attach a mouse to get right clicks to work properly. I didn't think the power usage was just due to the OS, but mainly from the use of the 9600M. Looks like there is even more of a battery tax for using Vista (I currently mostly use OS X, but eventually might do more).strain - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Could you explain your test methodology and tools?