Upgrading a newer machine from Windows Vista to Windows 7 could give power savings when using a battery, according to Microsoft.
At a demonstration on Tuesday, Microsoft showed two identical laptops playing the same DVD, with the Windows 7-equipped notebook getting 20 per cent better battery life than one running Windows Vista. In general, users can expect newer systems running Windows 7 to offer 10 per cent to 20 per cent better battery improvement when watching a DVD, the company said.
"We're achieving a very significant amount of battery savings," said Microsoft principal program manager Ruston Panabaker.
Microsoft and Intel, which co-organised the demonstration, declined to say just how much overall battery life improvement Windows 7 might offer compared with Vista, saying there are too many factors that can influence such results.
"I don't want to state a number," Panabaker said at the event.
The event was designed to outline the joint work that the two halves of 'Wintel' have been doing to make 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, although real-world performance is likely to vary a lot based on what's inside the PC and how well tuned it is. For instance, the system shown Tuesday had a solid-state drive and other high-performance components.
The demonstration came as Microsoft gears up for the 22 October launch of Windows 7.
Intel itself is willing to use Windows 7 within its own corporate walls. The chipmaker has been an XP-only shop throughout Vista's life. In an interview, Intel vice-president Stephen Smith said the chipmaker had some internal applications that weren't Vista-compatible and the benefits of moving to Vista didn't justify the costs.
By contrast, Smith said several hundred people inside Intel are already running Windows 7 on their corporate machines.
CNET News' Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.
Talkback
How does the battery life compare to MAC, or Linux? Anything compared to Vista will , or should be, better. As to Win 7 booting up in 11 seconds, what happens 6 months down the road? Does it slow to a crawl like XP does? A new install of XP boots quickly, but after a few months slows significantly. Linux, on the other hand, remains at a constant speed a year later. And you have to remember this was tested by MS, so you have to add a grain of salt, as MS has a track record of making themselves look better than they actually are.
Oh yes, back in the 1950's. American car makers would always have "concept" cars for the auto shows. First they were "jet age" inspired then "space age" inspired. These concept cars had almost nothing to do with the production cars. They just gave the potential customers something to think about as they were driving their non-concept production car. And so it is with Microsoft. Instead of a concept OS they are showing us a "reference" system. No end users will ever see an 11 second boot up with Windows 7 no more than GM customers in 1959 would see a gas turbine engine in their brand new Impala.
Amen, Ator. Comparing any spanking new operating system to Vista is a pointless exercise in guaranteed "success" - even when the "new" operating system in question is nothing more than Vista with Lipstick.
What I find most interesting about the fact that Microsoft conducted the so-called "comparison" themselves is that we have already reached the point where the only time MS even mentions Vista any more is as a negative comparison.
jw 2/9/2008
Those numbers touting an 11 second boot time are from HIBERNATION files. Not from a cold start. As a result, they are total crap. I did my own "tests" on Win 7.
Assuming you haven't loaded ANY software at all, like MS Office 2007 say, yes you can get the system to boot from hibernation in very few seconds. The first freaking application install slows down the boot time from hibernation or a cold-start.
A cold start takes 30 to 40 seconds. Most of the time spent doing the typical PnP setup, rebuilding the swap file etc. Hibernation file restarts bypass all of that. Using hibernation in Linux or Windows is a good power-saving technique. BUT it is only useful when it is setup properly and there have been NO CHANGES what-so-ever in software or hardware.
Leaving your system open to Windows of Linux system updates negates the benefits of having a hibernation file until you re-establish the hibernation state.
You pay for the fast boot by dealing with re-establishing the hibernation file on each shut-down.
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