Posted: March 22, 2008/Under: Computers/By: My Digital Life Editorial Team

Feeling that your notebook or laptop computer running for shorter time on battery after upgrading to Windows Vista from Windows XP? Or now Vista PC requires more frequent recharge? If you feel so, indeed you’re not the only one. Many users have reported that notebook computer running on Vista operating system consumes more power and shorten battery life faster comparing on mobile system that uses Windows XP, despite some claims that Vista may save electricity bill.

Lenovo, which manufactures and sells ThinkPad brand of high end business laptop PC, has published a benchmark result for fully charged battery power lasting time when using its latest popular ultraportable ThinkdPad X300 on both Windows XP and Windows Vista operating system.

Battery power on Vista and XP

The comparison of battery life is published on ThinkPad X300 China website. And it’s probbaly one of the first official claim by OEMs that Vista power consumption and load on battery is higher than XP. The translated chart is below.

  Battery Usage Time (Hours) Weight (kg)
XP Vista
No optical drive，3 Cell LiPolymer Standard Battery 4.3 3.3 1.33
DVD burner，3 Cell LiPolymer Standard Battery 4.3 3.3 1.42
No optical drive，6 Cell Li-Ion Battery 6.5 4.9 1.42
DVD burner，6 Cell Li-Ion Battery 6.5 4.9 1.51
3 Cell LiPolymer Bay Battery，3 Cell LiPolymer Standard Battery 7.5 5.6 1.50
3 Cell LiPolymer Bay Battery，6 Cell Li-Ion Battery 10 7.5 1.59

As shown from the chart above, the battery usage time is considerably shorten by up to 25%, no matter which battery packs users are choosing. And mind you, ThinkPad X300 is one of the thinnest and lightest notebook in the world, thus the power usage difference between XP and Vista may be larger on bigger computer. So want to save power and want to get longer working time between charges? Switch to or stick with Windows XP.

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  • binarys

    I'm going with the other two posts…

    I've run XP and Vista Ultimate on a T61p with a 9 cell for quite sometime. Using the proper power management profile is key to maintaining a long battery life.

    I can eek 4 hours out of both vista and xp after some minor tweaking.

  • Artem S. Tashkinov

    There's nothing extraordinary here. Just consider the following Vista only "features": Vista doesn't let your HDD stop for a second, Vista uses far more CPU resources due to incredible number of background processes where three biggest offenders are Indexing service, Windows Defender and Aero DWM service which exploits your GPU.

  • I recently got a new laptop (Dell) and opted for Vista instead of XP to be installed on it. Truth be told, I don't know how my old laptop battery would have performed with an upgrade.

    I do want to share my observation with a brand new laptop and Vista installed, there are options for the battery useage and I noticed if I choose performance over balance, the battery goes out faster depending on the application (like a media player), but if I choose balanced, it is noticably longer but the view is uglier (screen is dimmed).

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