Technology Lab / Information Technology

Vista Beta 2 drains laptop batteries, generates more heat

Redmond has admitted that the newest Vista beta is hard on your hard working …

Vista's Aero Glass might be pretty and something to show off, but like most pretty things it looks to be expensive, in ways some of us might not have considered before. If you use a laptop, it might just drain your batteries:

Going by internal tests at one hardware maker, which declined to be named, there is noticeably lower battery life when Vista runs in its "average power" mode.

Microsoft has said that the current versions of the update deliver less battery life than Windows XP, but the company has also said it hopes to close the gap in the coming months.

Until Vista's gluttonous ways are mended, users can run their laptops in modes that aren't as pretty but also aren't as much of a drain on one's juice. With a lot of work to do until the public release of Vista, and Microsoft's Jim Allchin stating the battery issue isn't high on his list of priorities, it's up for grabs regarding what form any improvements take, and how effective they are.

Next up on Vista's List of Fun Laptop Things™, it looks like Apple Macbook Pro users aren't the only laptop owners being treated to extra heat from otherwise trusty portables:

Beyond the battery life question, there is also the matter of the heat generated by the graphics chips and other components, which work full throttle even doing basic tasks.

Robert McLaws, who runs Vista enthusiast site, said that his Toshiba Tecra M4 has been generating considerably more heat running the operating system beta.

Let's see, use more juice, work your chips harder, generate more heat. Yep, sounds about right to little old me. Granted, this is a beta so we should cut Redmond some slack. However, if the final consumer version of Vista ships in January 2007 with these same issues, I suspect a lot of laptop users aren't going to feel that their horizons have been improved by Microsoft's new OS.

Expand full story

This article does not have a comment thread.