Battery life in XP vs. Vista

Message

RMD · #31 Post by **RMD** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:33 pm

dfumento wrote:Is there a way to turn off the background defrag when on battery?

I don't believe that Vista runs the background defrag while on battery power by default.

BTW, for those of you experiencing worse battery life on Vista, I suggest purchasing a cheap USB Key or Flash memory card for your laptop, and then enabling ReadyBoost on that disk.

ReadyBoost will cache frequently used contents from your hard disk and allow the laptop to spin down the drive much more frequently, thereby saving you a *lot* of juice.

Furthermore, when Hybrid disks come out, it will result in a dramatic increase in battery performance on laptops that have them. Microsoft's testing has shown that, with typical use, hybrid disks extend the battery life of most laptops by around 30% or more.

ashleys · #32 Post by **ashleys** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 9:44 am

I don't think ReadyBoost will save you much disk power.

ReadyBoost only provides the ability to read pages from the Flash Device. All page writes *HAVE* to be written to the disk as well to maintain integrity. It is nothing more than providing a cache device for the pagefile.sys but without any cache fast-write or de-stage capability.

#33 Post by **tomh009** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 3:36 pm

ashleys wrote:I don't think ReadyBoost will save you much disk power.

ReadyBoost only provides the ability to read pages from the Flash Device. All page writes *HAVE* to be written to the disk as well to maintain integrity. It is nothing more than providing a cache device for the pagefile.sys but without any cache fast-write or de-stage capability.

You are correct in that ReadyBoost is a read-only cache. However, it's not a pagefile cache.

Instead, what the ReadyBoost team was targeting was the slow seek times of hard disks. Increased rotational speeds and disk densities have provided an order of magnitude bump for sequntial disk I/O over the past few years, but random I/O is still constrained by the time required to move the disk head from the outer edge to the inner one or vice versa.

So what ReadyBoost actually does is watch your usage patterns over time and then attempt to preload the cache so that the data is available when you need it. So if you run Outlook at 9 AM every weekday morning, it'll preload Outlook into the cache at 8:30 to speed up the the application start, for example.

It's a clever idea -- but until I try it I don't know how much of a performance impact it'll make for me in practice. Seems like a cheap way to provide some boost, though, especially if you have an internal flash slot, like the SD slot on X6 series or the CF slot on the X3 series.

sugo · #34 Post by **sugo** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:55 pm

Has anyone benchmarked the wattage difference between XP and Vista Final version with Aero off?

ashleys · #35 Post by **ashleys** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:57 pm

So what ReadyBoost actually does is watch your usage patterns over time and then attempt to preload the cache so that the data is available when you need it. So if you run Outlook at 9 AM every weekday morning, it'll preload Outlook into the cache at 8:30 to speed up the the application start, for example.

What you're describing here is SuperFetch not ReadyBoost. I agree that they are not *actually* providing a front-end cache for pagefile.sys but the net effect is the same. I did see somewhere that they are using a file called ReadyBoost.sfcache and that it's a FAT32 file (hence the 4GB cache limit).

ldoogy · #36 Post by **ldoogy** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 8:31 am

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't the battery life problem related to the fact that Vista doesn't really control the power state of all the peripherals? For example, do we know what mode the CPU is put into when we're at the "Maximum Battery" mode? Is it the absolute slowest setting? It might not be, which would explain why Vista is so much more wasteful. It's not Vista, it's just that on XP we have Lenovo's software for controlling our system and setting the CPU's speed properly.

#37 Post by **tomh009** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 8:56 am

ashleys wrote:What you're describing here is SuperFetch not ReadyBoost. I agree that they are not *actually* providing a front-end cache for pagefile.sys but the net effect is the same. I did see somewhere that they are using a file called ReadyBoost.sfcache and that it's a FAT32 file (hence the 4GB cache limit).

ReadbyBoost is basically an extension of SuperFetch -- if you have a flash drive, SuperFetch uses flash memory to supplement the RAM.

ReadyBoost utilizes the file system on the flash drive, and FAT32 is the file system they all use.

#38 Post by **tomh009** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 8:58 am

sugo wrote:Has anyone benchmarked the wattage difference between XP and Vista Final version with Aero off?

In another thread somewhere ... as I recall, someone tested with a T60 with Aero etc turned off, and saw about 13.5W with XP and 16.5W with Vista.

simms · #39 Post by **simms** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 10:06 pm

ldoogy wrote:Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't the battery life problem related to the fact that Vista doesn't really control the power state of all the peripherals? For example, do we know what mode the CPU is put into when we're at the "Maximum Battery" mode? Is it the absolute slowest setting? It might not be, which would explain why Vista is so much more wasteful. It's not Vista, it's just that on XP we have Lenovo's software for controlling our system and setting the CPU's speed properly.

Definetely, but we presume speedstep is on, etc etc, which can be verified by NHC, for example.

boon · #40 Post by **boon** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 10:32 pm

how did you install vista on a20m? isnt the laptop way below requirement for the OS?

If so I might as well try it on the transnote :O

Musti · #41 Post by **Musti** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:01 am

simms wrote:
ldoogy wrote:Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't the battery life problem related to the fact that Vista doesn't really control the power state of all the peripherals? For example, do we know what mode the CPU is put into when we're at the "Maximum Battery" mode? Is it the absolute slowest setting? It might not be, which would explain why Vista is so much more wasteful. It's not Vista, it's just that on XP we have Lenovo's software for controlling our system and setting the CPU's speed properly.
Definetely, but we presume speedstep is on, etc etc, which can be verified by NHC, for example.

You can fine tune the Power Options, by going to Edit Plan Settings.

Out of the box, Vista comes with three plans. Balanced, High Performance, and Power Saver. What is confusing is in all these plans, you can tweak the CPU speed by specifying a minimum and a maximum. And when you switch from AC to DC, the plans need to be changed manually. So it's a good idea to know the tweaks and not leave everything to Vista's defaults.

Interestingly, the first few days Vista is installed, you'll see a lot of disk activity as the system tries to learn from you. After the second day, the fan comes on less often and the HD access is minimized.

noetus · #42 Post by **noetus** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:09 am

I have Vista and Windows 2003 dual-booted, with pretty much the same applications installed on each OS, with a Widget/Gadget showing CPU usage, and I notice more CPU usage during Vista during idle moments (plugged in- I haven't checked on battery yet). So suppose I am just starting at the screen with no background programs doing anything significant, in Win2003 I see the CPU usage drop to 0-3%, while in Vista it jumps back and forth between 05-20% (the kinds of figures we would expect to see given the power usage differences quoted in this thread). When I check Task Manager I see system processes using those cycles. If it's true that it's disk/CPU usage that's using up the extra power in Vista, it should be possible to write a power management program that cuts down on most of the background processing in Vista when on high battery performance mode, since it's all expendable stuff such as disk defrag and indexing and stuff like that. The difference in GUI and GPU processing seems less likely to be the culprit, especially if all you're doing on battery is sitting in a cafe surfing the net or writing a paper.

Louis · #43 Post by **Louis** » Mon Dec 25, 2006 9:20 am

Hey guys this is really bothering me to the point that I'm thinking of switching back to XP. Going on a plane trip while I had XP i was able to watch a whole DVD and probably half of another one. Just switching to Vista, I went on a trip 3 days ago and couldn't get one single DVD to finish playing, even though the battery meter said it had more than 3 hours left of life when i first started. I am not running Aero because my video card does not support it, and a 50% or more of battery life drop seems to be a bit extreme. Please post if anyone finds a solution for this, for now I think i'll be going back to XP....
As i type this my laptop (z60t) has been on for about 10 minutes and it's already gone from 3+ hours of charge left to 89% (2.4 hours) left...ridiculous!

pianowizard · #44 Post by **pianowizard** » Mon Dec 25, 2006 4:40 pm

Louis wrote:Just switching to Vista, I went on a trip 3 days ago and couldn't get one single DVD to finish playing

Which version of Vista are you using?

dandiep · #45 Post by **dandiep** » Mon Dec 25, 2006 6:28 pm

OK, has anyone really done testing here? I think y'all might be exadgurating the affects of Vista a little. Here are some cold hard facts about my T60 Core Duo 2Ghz computer:

- While doing nothing and having the setting on the lowest brightness, I consume around 13-13.5 W (sometimes under 13). Turning the wireless radio on or off didn't seem to make too much of a difference.
- Turning the brightness all the way up switched consumption to about 16 W.
- Switching to Aero didn't make a difference, unless I was constantly dragging windows around. But how often do you drag windows around anyway?
- I am able to get about 4.5 hours of battery life doing HEAVY work (I am a software developer - which means lots of disk access, lots of CPU usage) on the extended battery.
- If I am just doing light work the battery meter says I'll get nearly 6 hours (I never do light work though)
- You can disable the indexing stuff in your power plan, so I don't think that should cause may problems in terms of battery performance.

I never really used XP too much on my laptop that much, so I can't really compare. Am I missing out on a lot of battery life? Thats about what I expected given the reviews of the laptop.

Louis · #46 Post by **Louis** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 9:19 pm

I am using Vista Ultimate RC2
As far as my experience, i can definitely tell the difference. Like I mentioned going from being able to watch 1 1/2 DVDs to not even being able to finish one is really bad. Again the meter does say I have 3 hours left when full but then quickly decreases and after 10 -15 minutes of playing a dvd it'll go down to 2 hours etc...

warder · #47 Post by **warder** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 1:00 am

z60m, 9 cell.

XP: 6 hours
Vista: 3.5 hours

XP: using IBM Power Manager
Vista: using modified power profile to optimize power use, latest Thinkpad Vista drivers. Display on minimum brightness. Background processes like search disabled on battery.

It just uses more power. Still like Vista though.

pianowizard · #48 Post by **pianowizard** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:45 pm

warder wrote:XP: 6 hours
Vista: 3.5 hours

That's an astoundingly big difference! How long ago was the XP measurement made? I'm wondering whether part of the difference is just because the battery has gotten older.

#49 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:56 pm

pianowizard wrote:That's an astoundingly big difference! How long ago was the XP measurement made? I'm wondering whether part of the difference is just because the battery has gotten older.

I'd also like to see the actual power consumption figures (in W) in both XP and Vista. Those take the battery condition out of the picture. Will Vista's power consumption really be double that of XP?

pianowizard · #50 Post by **pianowizard** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:39 pm

tomh009 wrote:I'd also like to see the actual power consumption figures (in W) in both XP and Vista. Those take the battery condition out of the picture.

Well, to do that properly, one really needs to make multiple measurements under various conditions and average them, and that's obviously not easy.

#51 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 9:01 pm

pianowizard wrote:Well, to do that properly, one really needs to make multiple measurements under various conditions and average them, and that's obviously not easy.

The battery information applet provides readings pretty easily and quickly as long as we are not looking for scientific accuracy.

Doing them at idle, with and without wireless, and under 100% load doesn't really take more than 10-15 minutes per OS.

I'd volunteer to do it but I don't have Vista yet (and my X31 won't run Aero anyway).

Saml01 · #52 Post by **Saml01** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:27 am

My X60s with vista gets about 4 hours of battery life, with or without aeroglass. On XP the computer gets close to 8. Yesterday I had jury duty and with xp I watched 2 movies and browsed the net the whole time I was there and when I left I still had power left.

Vista is also slow as hell compared to XP

pdudas · #53 Post by **pdudas** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:00 am

Do you have enough memory in your thinkpads?
I have 2gb memory in my x60. With an 8cell battery I have 6-7 hour on Xp with wireless.

Itried the Vista. It runs about 2.5 hour from a 4 cell battery (XP runs 3 hour from the 4 cell).
From the 8 cell battery the Vista runs 4.5-5 hours.
The power consumption is 16-18W on wireless lan with maximum brighness and aeroglass on.
There is 25% or less power consumption difference between the xp and vista.

I dont think this is a big difference...

crxvtec · #54 Post by **crxvtec** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:03 am

BTW my T43 now goes t ohibernate without putting up a MsgBox saying battery is low - this is WAY annoying as I don't keep an eye on the battery meter. Is there a way of getting this message box back, or getting it to come up earlier?

FYI I'm running Vista RTM and I get <100 minutes from a 6 cell battery. I think 9 cell batteries are the only way to go with Vista and I expect laptops sold in 2007 will have much meatier batteries to allow for decent runtimes on Vista. I look forward to hybrid and flash only HDDs - anything to improve runtime!

Watching DVDs on flights is now a joke and hardly any airlines have the power jack in the seat (especially in economy)

boon · #55 Post by **boon** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 3:44 pm

I am currently using vista business RTM on a x31. It runs about 10-12 watts this is with wifi on and medium brightness. My battery is old though and so far compare to xp, it is almost the same.

oh and this is without aero, since x31 can't support aero

budspencer · #56 Post by **budspencer** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 5:00 pm

arni wrote:There was a discussion about the fact that vista sucks more battery than xp on the vista newsgroups.

The final statement from an MS guy was, that indeed there is more power consumption in actual builds like 5600 and 5744. But you have to remember that they are still in beta as most of the drivers are.

Despite of the fact that the gui is more dependent on gpu the overall power consuption would not affect the system so drastically when oems will push final drivers with better vista support.

As is of now i only noticed on my T60 a slightly decrease of battery time (maybe about half an hour). So thats not really an issue, since i'm only on the standard battery and battery life was not better in xp.

What about Aero? Are you using it? Did you recognized a difference between Aero and the "normal" theme concerning the battery life?

JohnnyM · #57 Post by **JohnnyM** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:31 am

Tom's Hardware has posted XP vs. Vista benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/

The power benchmark shows almost no difference between XP and Vista running Aero.

rvacha · #58 Post by **rvacha** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:06 am

Yes, but that was a desktop with little design for low power sleep states, componets, etc. I think to get a fair comparison you have to have the indexer in Vista totally turned off (or at least add WDS 3.0 to XP). In the case of Thinkpads they need to have the applicable registry hacks for SATA, USB S3, etc before making a comparision. I haven't seen a test with the fixes applied, just "pure" Vista installs vs. XP with aftermarket power management installs. I ran WDS when the machine (T60) ran XP and I'm not seeing much difference in run time. Since the Power Manager by Lenovo for Vista is installed new/fresh, it will take time to calibrate and give the most accurate run time estimates. Might want to install something like RightMark's RM Clock and verify that the CPU is throttling back during idle times

jtheun · #59 Post by **jtheun** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:42 am

I just got my 2GHz T60p (Core 2 Duo) yesterday, loaded up Vista Ultimate RC2 and went through installing all the updates I could find on the Lenovo site. My power scheme is on 'Maximum Battery Life', and I see my computer running at 20W+... with the internal display off! I hear people talk about 13W... wow.

Any advice? Where do I start?

[/code]

#60 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:46 am

What's your CPU utilization like? Is the search engine running at full blast in the background (if you just installed)? What speed is your CPU running at?

Battery life in XP vs. Vista

How do I reduce my consumption?

Who is online