The Unexpected: Battery Life in OS X vs. Windows Vista

[AnXioZ]

All I can do for now is report the numbers as is. An unexpected benefit of OS X appears to be better battery life. Go figure.

A really interesting read @ AnandTech's new MacBooks review (http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3435&p=13).

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/5539/14676838cy3.png

[Rmrdr13]

I'm in class right now on my macbook (2.4 ghz penryn), and looking at my battery remaining time I've got 4 hours and 21 minutes left with full backlight and power saver setting. I only have a desktop that have windows on it so i cant compare it to a similar windows system.

[oohms]

They should have tested with OS X on the X300 as well

[dinos22]

They should have tested with OS X on the X300 as well

i agree

[The0men]

They should have tested with OS X on the X300 as well

It would certainly be more conclusive.

[Knight]

Is it possible for the battery life to be cut in half? Some part of me thinks that they messed up the review. Why balanced and not energy efficient mode for the Vista systems? No OS X vs. Vista performance tests? :(

[Ensamvarg]

They should have tested with OS X on the X300 as well

Doesn't that break the "no OS X on non macs plz"? Though it would be useful anyway.

[afireinside]

Doesn't that break the "no OS X on non macs plz"? Though it would be useful anyway.

Oh well... Its necessary for a fair comparison. I'm willing to bet OS X has a boat load of hidden battery life optimizations and vista was run at max voltage/clock speed the whole time. Hell I remember when I had an ibook the radeon 9200 in it ran MUCH lower clock rates than the ATI spec card.

[breathemetal]

I love the battery life on my MBP
Sure, its not the best gaming machine ever, and sure, it isnt as fast as my desktop rig, but i love it :)
It's a great computer for everything besides gaming.
Hell, I can run Stalker Clear Sky on it on "high"ish settings and it plays decent.

[rintamarotta]

Im running Mac OSX 10.5.5 in my E8400 machine.

I cannot really compare it from laptop perspective but normal pc perspective.
Mac OSX uses in my E8500 less power than same machine in windows vista with best power saving settings possible, comparsion is done with power meter that is connected to my power output in wall and psu to that power meter.

[Frank M]

They should've tested xp also and maybe even some linux distro.

The result is surprising. There's something very strange going on.
I dunno, maybe peripherial management, for example wifi: for my
lappy, xp guesstimates a bit over 6hrs with wifi off and brightness
down; with the intel 3945 or whatever on, it shrinks to about 4
hrs, the 8-10W drain goes up to 13-14W. Then there's also the
ocassional hdd-write inherent to windows, that the unix-based
osx doesn't have. And so on.

[Loser777]

I guess there's a new side to bloated now... they should have tested XP also.

[dinos22]

i converted an OS on a Lenovo 3000 V100 recently from Vista to XP and the battery life went 1 hour to 3 hours

yet on multiple Sony machines made no difference

so a guy changing OSes on Lenovo only would make some wrong conclusions i think

[Papu]

It's probably down the the graphics card not switching down clocks for vista :rolleyes:

+ it doesnt really make a difference how much longer you can have Osx running , its just more time to sit there looking at yourself in the glossy screen and drink starbucks /jk.

[luie]

for me,
Vista = ~2.5hrs
XP = ~3hrs
so...OSX should be ~5hrs? that's pretty amazing.

[B.E.E.F.]

I don't see a difference on mine.

Server 2008 x86 with Aero enabled, no transparency since I heard it was a killer for mobile GPUs.

Intel 950GMA with T2080.

[AndrewZorn]

I wonder how it compares to a fancy-graphics Linux, like Ubuntu?

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop and still get :banana::banana::banana::banana:ty battery life. It's a Dell XPS M1330. I get worse battery life than anyone, compared to reviews and whatnot.

I don't see how they double battery life. I mean, reducing hard drive access, etc but really, it's nearly DOUBLE...

[Vapor]

And it's double while DOING things....so it's not like it's going to a lower sleep state for idling.

I'm curious how it's done as well. :)

[Gunlance]

i've got a vista laptop with a secondary and a primary extended battery. It says I have about 9 hrs tops of battery life(really 5 while doing things). My new MacBook Pro has a fraction of the total battery capacity and lasts about 4.5 hours. I have not tried switching to the more powergpu ont he mac yet. I'll run some tests on both and see what I come up with.

[Thallid]

Well... I have my doubts about this review. Almost twice the battery life in heavy usage, no way.

[inCore]

I wonder how it compares to a fancy-graphics Linux, like Ubuntu?

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop and still get :banana::banana::banana::banana:ty battery life. It's a Dell XPS M1330. I get worse battery life than anyone, compared to reviews and whatnot.

I don't see how they double battery life. I mean, reducing hard drive access, etc but really, it's nearly DOUBLE...

My XPS M1210 got quite good battery life, before I fried the hard drive whilst biking to an evening lecture when it was raining. :p:

Are you using Compiz Fusion (I think that's what it's called)? That'll really kill your laptop but it's so worth it.

[PopDog]

yeah, I have one of the mbp's bootcamped with xp (not the new new one) and xp gets significantly less battery life. probably because it's not optimized and tweaked.. just a stock xp install.

[Turok]

I see a lot of speculation, but no detailed apples to apples comparisons here. :shakes:
Come on guys! Could someone with OSX test vs Vista, XP, and Linux (Ubuntu or Xubuntu maybe)? Preferably on a desktop with and without a dedicated graphics solution and an outlet watt meter like Kill-A-Watt. It could be that Vista doesn't run as well on a MacBook, or Vista uses too much GPU resources, etc. I would like to see some constant 100% CPU and GPU stress tests to see if it's more than just better idle power management.

[AnXioZ]

I will do an OSX86 installation on my DV6000t laptop during the thanksgiving break, midterms suck, and I'll compare the results running Ubuntu, XP, Vista, and Leopard. My battery is really poor though, I get about less than an hour running Vista on Power Save :(.

[Gautam]

I see a lot of speculation, but no detailed apples to apples comparisons here. :shakes:
Come on guys! Could someone with OSX test vs Vista, XP, and Linux (Ubuntu or Xubuntu maybe)? Preferably on a desktop with and without a dedicated graphics solution and an outlet watt meter like Kill-A-Watt. It could be that Vista doesn't run as well on a MacBook, or Vista uses too much GPU resources, etc. I would like to see some constant 100% CPU and GPU stress tests to see if it's more than just better idle power management.

Ditto to all of that. The implications here are really interesting though...

[Frank M]

I see a lot of speculation, but no detailed apples to apples comparisons here. :shakes:
Come on guys! Could someone with OSX test vs Vista, XP, and Linux (Ubuntu or Xubuntu maybe)? Preferably on a desktop with and without a dedicated graphics solution and an outlet watt meter like Kill-A-Watt.

Unfortunately, that would still not be apples-to-apples.
E.g. i'm sure my subnotebook switches to even less consumption when
on battery compared to being plugged in.
Plugged in, the cpu temp is 52-55C. On battery, it's down to 49...

[bluep3ace]

i converted an OS on a Lenovo 3000 V100 recently from Vista to XP and the battery life went 1 hour to 3 hours

yet on multiple Sony machines made no difference

so a guy changing OSes on Lenovo only would make some wrong conclusions i think

where are you getting the XP drivers? I have the same model laptop, and I'm getting ~1.2 hours of battery life on vista (a definite less if I use the new gui). It's horrid.

[Kobalt]

I will do an OSX86 installation on my DV6000t laptop during the thanksgiving break, midterms suck, and I'll compare the results running Ubuntu, XP, Vista, and Leopard. My battery is really poor though, I get about less than an hour running Vista on Power Save :(.

Isn't it kind of hard to get OSX on a non-Apple laptop... finding the drivers and such?

[Nano2k]

Isn't it kind of hard to get OSX on a non-Apple laptop... finding the drivers and such?

There are several hacked OSX releases that contain a lot of drivers. Depending on the laptop you use, you can get pretty much everything to work.

[Kobalt]

There are several hacked OSX releases that contain a lot of drivers. Depending on the laptop you use, you can get pretty much everything to work.

Doesn't work for my Latitude XT :(. The hard drive is not even recognized. When installing with a USB drive, there are no graphics drivers so the resolution is maxed at 1024x768 and as such the tablet screen doesn't work right. It would be pretty cool to get OSX on this tablet, especially if it extends battery life.

[btdvox]

Its definitely due to MacOSX, I have a new gen macbook, and bootcamping windows nets me 2.5 hrs with everything on low as possible!! OSX Nets me about 5.5 hrs with the display on medium.

bigg difference for laptop users.