Windows 7: Release Candidate 1 Preview
by Ryan Smith and Gary Key on May 5, 2009 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
What about battery life?
It doesn't look like Windows 7 is going to be any more power friendly than Windows Vista when it comes to power draw on desktop systems. However, that doesn't necessarily mean there won't be improvements for laptops. Microsoft has a white paper detailing some of the changes.
One item where users do have more control than in Windows Vista is in regards to LCD dimming. You can now set the delay and brightness level that your LCD will dim to before turning off completely. Some users might prefer that to seeing their screen go black if they are just pausing for a couple minutes. In terms of the true impact of this feature, however, there hasn't been any significant change that we can test in a fair way. Obviously, running your LCD at a lower brightness level will require less power, but we standardize our laptop testing at 100 nits in order to keep things equal.
What about other power saving features? A section on the idle power requirements states: "Idle efficiency is critical for the overall battery life of a PC because idle time dominates most scenarios. Reducing idle power consumption reduces the base power consumption. For example, if a portable computer uses 12W when the system is idle, all other scenarios increase power by some amount over the base 12W. Reducing idle power consumption benefits all other end-user workloads and scenarios, from DVD playback to office productivity." That makes sense, and Microsoft goes on to state, "Windows 7 provides greater idle efficiency by reducing (and in many cases eliminating) background activity on the system."
Windows 7 is supposed to improve laptop battery life by reducing CPU power requirements. One way this is accomplished is by keeping better track of what is going on in the system and reducing processor activity so that it can enter lower power states. They even claim, "In-box support of these technologies enables power-saving benefits immediately after installation." Immediate power saving benefits? If they can actually live up to that claim on the shipping version, that will be excellent. Other power saving features focus on additional peripherals, with specific mention made of networking, Bluetooth, and audio components.
With the information from the white paper in hand, we decided to conduct some power tests on three different laptops. Laptops were selected in order to cover the three primary graphics chip suppliers: NVIDIA, ATI, and Intel. For the Intel system, we used a Gateway M-7818U 15.4" notebook with GMA X4500 graphics, and the ATI system is Dell's Studio XPS 16 with Mobility Radeon HD 3670 graphics. We tested both of these systems with an OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD and a 320GB 5400RPM HDD. Finally, the NVIDIA notebook is the recently reviewed MSI GT627 featuring NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS graphics. So let's take a look at the results....
Where's my chart!?
...or not. Simply put, we did not see any benefit to using Windows 7 at this point in time in regards to battery life, and in fact most systems had slightly lower (by a couple minutes - within the margin of error) battery life under Windows 7. We had hoped that the MSI GT627 would fare better than the laptops with ATI and Intel graphics, since NVIDIA just released their beta 185.81 driver; however, that was not the case. In fact, of the three tested notebooks the MSI GT627 fared the worst, losing six minutes of battery life relative to Vista (a change of 5% in the wrong direction).
We only had time to conduct testing utilizing our Internet battery test, so it's possible we will see improvements in other tests. Multimedia in particular has potential for improvement, as Microsoft mentions that they have invested extra time in reducing power requirements for multimedia workloads. For now, we will reserve final judgment until the shipping product.
Several notebook manufacturers have indicated that in internal testing they are seeing battery life improvements of 3% to 5% with Windows 7, and they expect with further optimizations that they will see as much as 11% to 13% better battery life relative to Vista. So what's missing right now? Microsoft's white paper again has the likely answer: "Energy efficiency requires investments across the entire platform, not only in the core hardware or in the operating system. While Windows 7 can have a significant impact on platform energy efficiency, attached devices, and non-Microsoft and end-user applications, other platform extensions often have a larger total impact. The complexity and quantity of platform extensions require a broad approach to energy efficiency beyond focusing on a single component in the platform." In short, the laptops need more optimizations focused on power management.
We have done "virgin" installations of Windows Vista on notebooks in the past, and battery life is generally worse than if we test with the laptop as it comes configured by the OEM. Some OEMs are good about providing downloadable drivers and utilities so that you can duplicate the original configuration, but right now with Windows 7 we are stuck with whatever Microsoft provides on the release candidate DVD (or through Windows Update). Hopefully the various notebook manufacturers are paying attention to this area and will have the necessary drivers and other utilities in order to get the most out of Windows 7's power management features.
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Bmadd - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I see the graphs, i see the new features and i honestly cant be the only person who doesn't want to change from my Vista x64 install? Can i? i got a dual core and 4gig of ram, a dash of tweaks and moving the pagefile and everything loads within a second of running. I personally dont see how going from vista to 7 for me can be a thought when there gonna give me the only thing i care for in 7 and thats DirectX11 and the new aero features. Thanks MSSazar - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Why not?It's free to use and try. If you don't like it, go back.
I have switched both my HTPC and my main rig to Windows 7 simply because it is a more efficient way for me to work. The homegroups sharing features is miles better than the old, archaic sharing method and the new Media Center interface is fantastic.
Also, Windows 7 loaded up all the drivers I needed by default, including both of my Hauppauge TV Tuner drivers and it just worked.
I see a lot of naysayers nit-picking, which is fine. However, I have yet to see anyone point out anything meaningful that should disuade people from either using Vista or Windows 7.
Btw, for me, the biggest selling feature, beyond the vastly improved 10 foot interface in MCE, was Aero Peak. Can't go back to Vista now without that functionality :)
Bmadd - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Well i have never really used gadgets, widgets and such. There not for me like myspace and twitter aren't for me. I would hate to change to win7 after setting me vista install up so nicely only to not like it and have to spend time getting it back to the sleak thing it is at the moment.Perhaps i will download the RC and just keep it there till Win7 is released and drivers are all sweet, install RC on a new hard drive and go from there but i am fair to pleased with my current vista install to consider changing
papapapapapapapababy - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
not a single feature that i want or even care about. how about a good competent fast image viewer? more drm? giant icons? no classic ui? terrible. just give me a smaller, faster, stronger and more efficient xp or gtfo ms.TonkaTuff - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Microsoft should count themselves very lucky that Apple remains uninterested in being the OS for everyone and restrict themselves to the premium OS and hardware market.Yeah Snookie Im sure apple holds themseves back from over 90% of the O/S market based on there morals and lack of interest in making more money. What kind of deranged fanboy are you? Comments like the one above show how brainwashed some of you looney tunes are becoming.
It really is scary and you should seek professional help.
A comment in the article really hit the nail on the head,
MANY PEOPLE SAY THEY HATE VISTA BUT FEW CAN ACTUALLY SAY WHAT THEY HATE ABOUT IT.
Yeah Vista had issues when it first was released, it was a major step from the XP O/S but that was 2 bloody years ago. Ive been running Vista on my Gaming rig and my Work Laptop and a server/seed box and in 12 months I havnt had 1 crash that was the O/S's fault, Not one crash, not one BSOD, probably 4 or 5 freeze ups that had to be end tasked in 12 months on 3 systems numbering well over a 1000 hours of use, not even XP could claim to be that stable.
Like any O/S it has its annoyances, they all do (yes snookie even your precious mac).
Do I expect Win7 to be much different from Vista? No not really, I expect it will be a dressed up and refined version of Vista.
Why would Microshaft do such a thing, they just want more money, why not release it as a service pack for Vista?
BECAUSE THEY HAD TO CHANGE THE NAME AND MAKE IT OUT TO BE DIFFERENT FROM VISTA BACAUSE OF ALL THE LEMMINGS OUT THERE THAT HATE VISTA BUT DONT KNOW WHY THEY HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!!
End of rant.......Snookie you sir are a sychotic applemac fanboi, get help for god sake.
squeezee - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Microsoft has said to developers (at PDC at least) that Direct2D and DirectWrite along with the rest of DirectX 11 functionality will be available on windows Vista.fendell - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Has anyone tested Windows 7 and Ventrilo (any version) over some time?It's the only thing that keeps me on 64bit XP at the moment, because ventrilo has this weird behaviour on windows 7 where it suddenly doesnt recieve data for 2-5 minutes, then suddenly gets everything at once, this is veery frustrating and in fact raidbreaking in wow ;)
nycromes - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I have also used Windows 7 RC for WoW raiding and have had no major issues. Ensure you are running it as an administrator. I had a few issues before doing that, but none like you are describing. I am using a USB microphone and a standard soundcard speaker combination with no issue.vectorm12 - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I use ventrilo for wow a couple of times per week, at times for hours without any issues on build 7077x64(correct me if I'm wrong, found on piratebay.org btw). However I do use a USB connected wireless Microsoft headset(looks like the 360 one but grey) which might have some impact as it works like a second soundcard.snookie - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
If you think XP is the best OS ever then you haven't used very many. It is archaic."The biggest news is that the Ultimate/Business/Home Premium schism has been resolved with Windows 7."
This is a pretty amazing statement seeing as how it took a further paragraph to partly but not fully describe what all the versions are for.
The Start Menu remains a horrible user interface designed by committee. Just awful.
Windows 7! Now with even more DRM!!!
UAC is an attempt to place responsibility for security too much on the user which is why it was so intrusive. A certain amount of user action is reasonable but UAC went far beyond that.
WTF, why does IE 8 take up so much space with its headers? Seriously Microsoft do you have no idea at all about usability? Slapping a ribbon interface on a simple text processor is just dumb.
Mail, Calendar, and Movie Maker might as well have been removed because they suck. But their removal points out even more how Microsoft needs its own version of iLife.
ISO implementation is so Microsoft. Half-ass as usual.
Why does Windows 7 need a disk defragmenter in 2009? No other modern OS does.
Virtual Windows XP? Is this a joke? Probably won't run on older machines which is where it is needed most and even more headaches for desktop admins for configuration and administration.
Why would you do performance testing on an SSD drive which very few desktop boxes have these days?
Looks like Windows 7 will suck on laptops as much as Vista does. Not good news since so many notebooks are sold these days.
My recommendation to Corporations is that for the 95% of users who need basic functionality they replace Windows entirely with a locked down Linux of some form. Many that I have worked with are considering this very thing and I have no doubt the Windows 7 will hasten this decision. XP requires far too intensive support ( yes i know your handbuilt game tower never has to be rebooted with XP, sure it doesn't).
Microsoft should count themselves very lucky that Apple remains uninterested in being the OS for everyone and restrict themselves to the premium OS and hardware market and that an unrestricted Linux desktop is still to complicated for most users. more and more companies are providing their high end IT Architects and Developers with Macs and they are happily snapping them up. I have seen this at Cisco, Oracle, Motorola, and may others. When Visual Studio using .NET developers would rather use a VM on OS X t do their development there is something very wrong and I'm seeing a lot of that.
The authors really do not understand the relationship between development tools, threads, the kernel, and processor usage.