Microsoft touts battery life benefits of Windows 7

By Ina Fried on 02 September 2009, 10:20am

At a demo on Tuesday, Microsoft touted the battery life benefits of using Windows 7 instead of Windows Vista.

The company showed two identical laptops playing the same DVD, with the Windows 7-equipped machine enjoying 20 per cent better battery life than the one running Windows Vista.

"We're achieving a very significant amount of battery savings," said Microsoft principal program manager Ruston Panabaker.

Microsoft and Intel, joint organisers of the event, declined to say precisely how much improvement in battery life Windows 7 might offer, saying there are too many factors that can influence the result. In general, however, users can expect newer systems running Windows 7 to offer between 10 and 20 per cent better battery life when watching a DVD.

The event was intended to outline the joint work of the two companies in making Windows 7 perform better in areas such as virtualisation, power management and performance.

On the performance side, Microsoft and Intel showed a reference system that can boot up in 11 seconds. Again, real-world performance is likely to vary based on what's inside a PC and how well tuned it is. The system shown on Tuesday had a solid-state drive and other high-performance components.