Has Power Management improved over Vista?

[yak]

Hi everyone.

Quite a lot people here seem to be running the Windows 7 Beta (or even already RTM). I would like to hear your opinions on the power management in this new OS, especially in comparison to Vista.

The battery life of my T60 dropped a bit when I moved from XP to Vista so I would like to know if I can expect any improvement if I decide to go with the 7.

[BitNetMonkey]

So far after running Win7RTM for a week and using the Intel Graphics (not the ATI discrete, it uses more power) I have noticed about the same power usage on my 9-cell battery. I am comparing the power usage again Vista SP2, I saw a little increase in battery life from Vista SP1 to SP2.

[Marin85]

Quite a lot people here seem to be running the Windows 7 Beta (or even already RTM). I would like to hear your opinions on the power management in this new OS, especially in comparison to Vista.

Hi,
unfortunately I can´t give you any exact numbers, but as my battery is quite old now and I have discrete graphics, I believe I have recently become more sensible about the battery life of my ThinkPad. For that matter, my impression is that with Windows 7 my ThinkPad has slightly better battery life than it had with Vista (about 20 min more) on lowest settings and wifi on.This comparison is a bit like apples and oranges though, as I had Vista x64 and I currently have Windows 7 x86 as well as the fact that I had never used the classic theme in Vista, whereas I do use it in Windows 7 when on battery.

A side note: I have been experimenting with not having Lenovo Power Manager utility installed and using the built-in Windows Power Management instead for a while yet, and it seemed to deliver another 10 minutes on lowest settings. However, this was the case with the Power Manager version for Vista. I haven´t tried out the new Power Manager for Windows 7 beta yet.

Marin

[yak]

Thanks for your input guys.

I'll be testing the RTM myself soon and I'll try to later add my experiences to this thread too.

[blackomegax]

win7 pro 32.
with all of lenovo's beta drivers, i get 3-4 hours, max.
on a clean install, using only windows update drivers, i get 5-6 hours.