x31 and Vista Battery Life

[mbraun0]

Anyone have any experience with migrating to Vista from XP on an x31? In particular, I'm really curious if the battery life is affected by the move (I know the Radeon Mobility doesn't support Aero).

My main motivation for considering the move is that I hear the network stack has been reworked in Vista so there is less problems with maintaining a wireless connection in a stable fashion. I have major issues with my Intel 2100 card losing link and then reconnecting over and over (this seems to be independent of whatever driver I use). The problem seems to be alleviated by using linux with native drivers, but I find that linux has a ways to go in terms of power management, so I am left considering vista.

Thanks!

[mazzinia]

Have you considered changing the wifi card, instead?
I've an intel 2200, and it's stable... (and I guess a lot of people would suggest an atheros...)

Sounds a better upgrade than installing vista only for solving that issue.

[ryengineer]

On my thinkpad X31 with an old used up battery, it gave me around 1-1.5 hrs (as far as I can remember if correctly) with Windows Vista Ultimate version installed.

[meshua]

Anyone have any experience with migrating to Vista from XP on an x31?

Sorry but isn't that torcher for each? I'd never thought about doing that.

Brgds, Torsten.

[Jason404]

I use Vista on my main desktop PC, but I find it a very underwhelming OS. It is no way as good as XP, for its time.

I'd never consider putting Vista on my X31, as it does require pretty powerful hardware to run well.

I never ever get wi-fi dropouts. I have a Atheros a/b/g mini-PCI card that I bought from eBay for peanuts. I had to use the no-1802 hack, which was very easy.

[mbraun0]

Any consensus as to whether the IBM Atheros solution is better than the Intel 2200? Obviously you would lose the Centrino branding displayed by the BIOS at startup but this is cosmetic, so I don't really care.

Is there a major difference between versions I and II of the IBM 11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Adapter?

[Jason404]

My one is actually a Phillips card, with Atheros chipset. I got it for £6 on eBay (approx $12 USD). Any mini-PCI wi-fi card will work with the no-1802 hack. It really cannot hurt to try.

[iamdmc]

When I had it running on my X31, it gave me a max of 4 hours on either one of the batteries I have (both low charge cycles, one practically brand new).

I switched it back to XP - gives me up to 4 hours now.

[rckrchrdsn]

I use the Atheros a/b/g and it works great with Vista. I get about 4+ hours, so I have seen no real drop in time on this battery.

I like Vista for several major reason. Security is better especially when installing software. I have been a beta developer on Windows since 1.02 came out. Did I just give my age? Anyway, at least a human's intervention is required when playing with system files, that alone is almost enough for me.

The current reactions remind me a lot of XP's appearance except it had USB 2 in its favor, and MS wouldn't add a lot of new stuff to 2K. We'll see.