Stick with XP? Windows 7 Battery Life Worse on Netbooks
November 11th, 2009 by K. T. Bradford 
Back in August when we started testing the final version of Windows 7, we noticed that several netbooks didn’t last as long on a charge with the new OS installed as with Windows XP. Microsoft claimed that Win 7 notebooks would see longer battery life than Vista, and for the two full-size systems we upgraded that rang true. The Dell XPS Studio 16 only got an extra few minutes, but the Gateway NV lasted an extra hour. Netbooks have been a different story.
Recently we tested Windows 7 versions of the Toshiba mini NB205 and ASUS Eee PC 1008HA, and now HP’s Mini 311 with Windows 7 has been released. The results don’t look good. In each case we tested the three systems using the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi) and in each case the Windows 7 machines got less battery life:
| Netbook | Win XP Battery Life | Win 7 Battery Life |
| Toshiba mini NB205 | 9:24 | 8:51 |
| ASUS Eee PC 1008HA | 5:40 | 4:43 |
| HP Mini 311 | 5:43 | 4:52 |
For those scoring at home, that’s an average drop of 47 minutes, and you can get a lot of work (and play) done during that kind of time. We’re not the only ones who’ve noticed this trend. Our friends at Liliputing and JKOnTheRun – both of whom use the aggressive Battery Eater test to measure longevity – also noted that endurance on Win 7 netbooks has been lackluster.
So should consumers make the switch? In the case of the NB205, the difference in our test was small enough not to matter, especially given that you’re still getting over 8 hours of juice. But on a system like the Eee PC 1008HA and Mini 311, the loss of about an hour is significant.
Microsoft may want netbook owners to leave XP behind, and we dig new Windows 7 features like taskbar previews, but those who cherish their long battery life are going to be tough to convert. As we test more new netbooks we’ll continue to keep track of battery life deltas between Win 7 machines and their XP predecessors. Over time, we’re hopeful that driver updates and more fine tuning of Microsoft’s new OS will yield longer runtimes, but right now we’d have to say that the over-the-hill XP is still looking good.
UPDATE: For those who’ve suggested that turning off Windows 7’s more graphically intense features such as Aero Glass would improve the battery life, Kevil Toefl found that this wasn’t the case:
“…using Windows 7 with all of the advanced Aero features off not only makes your netbook look like a Windows 95 beta, it doesn’t help run time in any noticeable way.”
More importantly, Brad Linder points out why this thinking is flawed for most users:
“…if the only way Windows 7 netbooks can match the performance of netbooks running an operating system that’s nearly a decade old is to disable running services and tweak other things beneath the hood, then Microsoft has a problem…”
Our Related Content
- Windows 7: Bad For Netbook Battery Life?
- The Truth About Notebook Batteries
- Down with 3-Cell Batteries: Netbooks Should Have 5+ Hours of Battery Life
From Other Sites
- Microsoft Investigating Windows 7 Battery Problems (Notebooks.com)
- Lenovo ThinkPad X100e reviewed again, battery still stinks (Liliputing)
- iPad Battery Life: 10 hours to 140 hours???? (GottaBeMobile)
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24 Responses to “Stick with XP? Windows 7 Battery Life Worse on Netbooks”
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November 12th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Were you using the Toshiba Power Saver on the nb205?
November 12th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
No, we don’t use the power-saving features on any of the netbooks or notebooks we test so that we always have the same baseline.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
If Microsoft and/or Toshiba create power-saving software then why on earth would you disable it? This isn’t a ‘real-world’ scenario!
That is like comparing a naturally aspirated car to a turbo-charged car and then removing the turbo! For an honest comparison you should at least add a column for XP with power saving features enabled and a column for Windows 7 with power saving features enabled.
Another analogy would be comparing boot times but disabling ‘quick boot’ in the BIOS. Then the laptop with 4GB of RAM will take way longer than the laptop with 512MB of RAM to boot because of the POST memory test.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Well is this really a surprise to anyone? I’d much rather loose the battery life and use Win7 than have to go back to XP. Also, this is far from a thorough comparison..just FYI
November 12th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
The problem is, Mike, that the power saving options don’t work the same across all notebooks and netbooks. In order to devise a test that approaches fairness across all systems (and thus useful comparisons), you have to have the same conditions across the board.
Users will always be able to tweak power settings to get more or less battery life. And if each user were to compare battery life from XP to 7 with their tweaked settings being exactly the same, they’d probably notice a drop as well.
Take a look at the battery tests JKOnTheRun and Liliputing did – it’s a different kind of battery test than ours, yet they ended up with the same result — a loss in battery life. In situations like this, you need to compare apples to apples, that means same settings to same settings.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
What kinds of eye candy were enabled or disabled during these test (for both OS’s)
Windows 7 will automatcally disable aero glass and transitions if you set you run on battery power on regular laptops.
(Is this true for netbook?)
I think most people who use laptops don’t configure their power settings from the default. For these people they will get the benefit of the newer/more stable operating system with some UI benefits as well as a boost in battery life.
Your tests provide facts but their relevance to the end user is low.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Those systems can’t run Aero, right? If Aero is enabled, it may be the culprit for the battery drain.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
My HP 2140 with the tiny 3 cell battery gets basically the same battery life as the machine did with XP. Also the power management is much better with 7. If you set the netbook dwn for a few minutes it hibernates much better overall I thinp 7 on this machine works better.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
@Lisandro, the NB205 has Windows 7 Starter on it, so there isn’t much Aero to interfere. What I find most interesting is that Kevin at JKOnTheRun put Win 7 Ultimate on his NB205 and Brad at Liliputing used the Win 7 Starter version from Toshiba, but they both got almost exactly the same score on the Battery Eater test. So the Areo effects may have less to do with the battery life then you’d think.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
@tumbleone, I don’t know if it’s true that Win 7 does disable those things by default on all systems. Perhaps for the system you own, or perhaps you enabled that on your laptop but it isn’t enabled by default. I will check, if you like.
But you actually proved my point with your comment — most users don’t configure their power settings from the default. When we test, we disable any proprietary power tweaking options and just go with what the operating system itself does. The only changes we make is to stop the laptop from going into hibernation or shutting down before the battery is completely out of juice. We also set the screen brightness to 40%. Other than that, we don’t tweak. So what do you think we’re doing that stops us from getting the benefit of the operating system?
November 13th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Did you update the drivers to the latest ones for the test? It may narrow the difference if the new drivers (I suspect coming out continuously now) start working – but, of course, I am not at all sure. It would also be interesting to see a test that USES the power management apps that ship with asus netbooks, eg., as they can be downloaded for clean win7 installations as well. Though one might wonder if we use SHE on both xp and win7, and if these would do their job, the result would be no different at all…
November 13th, 2009 at 3:34 am
surely, and probably MS-DOS 6.22 consumes much less battery power than Windows XP, so let us return to ms-dos.
It is the natural evolution can not have everything and the problem is the batteries, no operating system
November 13th, 2009 at 10:45 am
@Dragon Z – the units we tested came from the manufacturers in both instances. Kevin Toefl installed Win 7 on the NB205 himself and downloaded the appropriate drivers from Toshiba.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Dragon Z – To your point, we noticed even worse performance on netbooks when we first tested them with Win 7–As we noted in our review of Windows 7 (http://www.laptopmag.com/review/software/windows-7.aspx?page=9), the NB205 got just 6:15 on the battery test. Considering it’s now at 8:51, that’s a marked improvement.
It seems like the gap has most to do with drivers. As the manufacturers improved their drivers, battery life improved. This issue isn’t as big with Vista machines running Win 7, since the operating systems are much closer in design. There’s just a greater difference between XP and Win 7, and the OEMs are still working to close that gap.
November 14th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Errr yeah, you forgot to mention which version of W7 you’re using..
With W7 starter, which is intended for netbooks, the battery life should actually improve somewhat, or remain the same. .
Not really a surprise that this is the outcome with a diff w7 version..
so, unreliable testing?
November 15th, 2009 at 10:28 am
@John, if you read the thread or click the links to the reviews you’ll see that the systems we tested had Home Premium except for the NB205 which had Starter. Kevin’s NB205 has Ultimate, Brad’s has Starter, and everyone’s Eee PC has Home Premium, I believe. So three different versions of Windows 7 and yet the results are the same: loss of battery life.
November 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Rather pointless test. Of course a new operating system will demand more power …
Ms claims that W7 gets better battery time then Vista, and it does… didnt mention win XP.
My 10 year old Nokia phones still have better battery life then a new 3G phone….should I stick to old tech , b/W screen and zero features…because of battery life?
Well i use these new features that the old model could only dream of, so i´ll rather have a modern phone…and i´ll rateher have a modern OS like W7.
The batteries will be bad within a year anyway .. so the benifits of 8hours will be less a factor when the battery only last 15 min on any OS a few months down the line.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:37 am
@JudaZ, for some people battery life is more important than the benefits gained from Windows 7 — with netbooks, anyway — and some don’t see the new features as benefits. Also, not all batteries are rubbish after a year. The one on my NC10 still gets great battery life.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:55 am
i’ve notice my laptop lasts longer on 7 then xp. You’re test laptop could have been doing something in the background draining the battery. Also when the first time you tryed the test on xp the battery wear for example 10% and now when you test windows 7 your battery wear is form example 40% you get different times. do the test again with windows 7 for laptops and windows xp
November 21st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Windows 7 is great on my desktop but I don’t really see the point in having it on a netbook which is built for portability and simple tasks. On my netbook, all I care about is battery, load up times, getting a wireless signal quickly to go on my web browser. I’m never going to use the DX11 capabilities on my netbook. What we need is a light weight OS to match with the hardware, and in that regard XP > Win7. It doesn’t matter how new it is, Win7 is just another operating system.
January 9th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Windows 7 really has some nice features for multitasking, but it cut my battery life in half on my Sony NW120J laptop. I used to get right around two hours of battery life while I had Vista installed. Now with Windows 7 the battery life is only an hour or so. This is a significant drop for me. Also, when i installed Windows 7 it disabled the volume and brightness keys on my keyboard and there is no way to turn them back on (at least that i could find). Overall, I like Windows 7 more as far as features but the battery life is really a killer, especially when on trips.
January 16th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Windows 7 will drain the battery quite a bit more when first installed it constantly accesses the HD building some databases and what not. On desktops this goes on for over 24 hours before it settles down if you just leave it alone and running. When you start doing stuff on the computer this task gets moved to the background and if you are constantly using the computer can continue for up to a week. I’m sure the constant HD access has alot to do with the reduced battery life.
If you are just doing fresh installs and then jumping right into the battery testing I think the results would be a bit skewed and over time the battery life would end up increasing significantly under W7 as compared to what it was for the first few days after a fresh install.
January 19th, 2010 at 1:48 am
Volumes and brightness. It looks like you need some new HID drivers for Win 7. Check on Sony’s website.
You are getting better performance oN Vista than Win 7. Are you sure? There maybe more variables here.
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Interesting test, I think that Microsoft was never really good in optimizing their software.
could you test a macbook, installed in Win xp and windows 7 and then compare it to the Snowleopard battery life.
I would really know if their machine & operating system has better battery life than the classic PC computers & windows.