It has to do with power management driver optimization. Linux and Hackintoshes see equally poor performance on the same hardware. People far smarter than me can explain all the different ways the OS can talk to the hardware.
Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
201–210 of 329 posts
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#202When you aren't creating the hardware, it is harder to care about power management in the software because that is seen as "someone else's problem". It is easy to blame things on terrible drivers or whatever, but no matter how you look at it, the product is worse as a result. This is why Microsoft needs to keep building their own hardware like the Surface. As time goes on, if Microsoft does it right, Surface is going…
Microsoft needs to keep building their own hardware because 3rd party manufacturers are doing to Microsoft's brand what Mac clones did to Apple in the early 90s. The Surface is absolutely gorgeous. If they softened the edges on the tablet portion it would be on my list of greatest pieces of tech hardware ever made. I would love to see MS try to build its own 'Yoga' type laptop...provided I can still install Linux on…
> If they softened the edges on the tablet portion it would be on my list of greatest pieces of tech hardware ever made.
I actually like Surface's edges quite a lot, I think it looks brilliant and stands out from the army of cheap looking iPad clones most of which look exactly the same. And the magnesium casing is also a great choice by MS, it makes it look expensive and well built (which it really is)
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#203Anecdotal, but on an older 11" MacBook Air I have a dual-boot with elementary OS (Ubuntu derivative) and I get around 20-30% better battery life with Linux than OS X (using laptop-mode-tools etc). I think this is probably due to all the iCloud crap going on with OS X these days, but I have no proof of that.
Check TimeMachine also (if you're running it). It's a beast.
I just recently had to replace my external hard drive I use for TM backups and whenever it would start to backup it would bring the computer to a grinding halt (2013? MBPr, it's from work). I ended up disconnecting it and taking it home on the weekend to do the initial backup.
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
A quick Google search shows many Windows laptops with equivalent or better battery life. Is your question why don't all Windows laptops have equal battery life?
How many windows laptops have you found that actually has the battery life they promise in marketing?
My EeePC is still doing quite well. Everything else I have ever bought has been a massive lie on the order of "* battery tested by doing nothing with the wireless and screen turned off."
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#205When you aren't creating the hardware, it is harder to care about power management in the software because that is seen as "someone else's problem". It is easy to blame things on terrible drivers or whatever, but no matter how you look at it, the product is worse as a result. This is why Microsoft needs to keep building their own hardware like the Surface. As time goes on, if Microsoft does it right, Surface is going…
But that's the thing. They did create the hardware, and it isn't even the first generation, and it still performs poorly. The problem isn't the hardware. It's the software. So either Microsoft makes a new OS from scratch that only works on their hardware, or this problem won't be fixed anytime soon, either way.
I think the point is that Apple has many, many more years of designing their software for a very specific list of hardware. MS software engineers are probably just starting to think about a closer relationship between code and hardware, and even then I'm sure there's a fair bit of distrust within MS as to how the market will respond. Will their OEM partners call foul on MS leveraging their position? It wouldn't be the first time.
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop comparing Windows, a desktop OS, to mobile-first optimised OSes like Android and iOS. Even Windows RT is not technically mobile-first optimised like those two. Windows Phone 8 vs Android/iOS would be a fair comparison. Because WP8 has undergone the same treatment and has been optimised for high battery efficiencies whilst still retaining the Windows NT kernel at its core. WP8 has always had support for high-reso…
If Microsoft markets Windows as a mobile platform I'll compare it to the existing competition. Sure, it might not be fair, but ultimately I'm looking for results, not fairness.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/meet
Search in a page with plenty of marketing blurb for "mobile". Zero results.
So since they aren't marketing it as how you perceive perhaps you should cut them some slack.
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#207I find the MBA vs Surface Pro 2 comparison to be more than slightly misleading:
>The screen is somewhat lower resolution
No, 1920x1080 isn't only somewhat higher than 1366x768, it's 1.97 times the number of pixels and the panel is PLS unlike the TN in the MBA. The display is the component that eats up the battery the most when doing things like Wi-Fi browsing, even the battery life of the MBA scales heavily with the level of brightness.
>not touch capable
It also has an another, separate layer for the Wacom digitizer, it has to be constantly emitting an electromagnetic field, which does take its toll on power consumption.
>i5-4200u CPU
It's i5-4250U, with a considerably lower base clock (1.3GHz vs 1.6GHz).
Another fact that all the recent articles about the Surface Pro 2 fail to mention, but isn't really relevant to the what the article is about, is that, with the Power Cover that was announced at the Surface keynote, it should be able to get 11.45 hours of Wi-Fi browsing if you extrapolate the results from the Anandtech benchmark, or about 12.9 hours if you do it with the 7:33 hours it got on The Verge review. This does bring the weight and thickness of the device above the MBA though.
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one uses Darwin for servers, not even Apple.
No one except a fair amount of people: http://www.macminicolo.net/ You can turn old laptops into "servers", or raspberry pi's, or hell even a commodore 64 for that matter. As long as it serves something of value over a network it qualifies. Whether its a good idea is another matter.
I think the fact you felt the need to put the word servers in quotes does a lot to show that you and justincormack are talking about computers serving a similar role, but with such laughably different requirements that it's obvious what point he was trying to make, and your statement, while technically correct, doesn't really change his point.
You are correct though, people do use commodity and low-end hardware for extremely light server needs, and even in data centers.
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#209I see and agree with the larger point he's making, but a 42% increase in a single generation strikes me as huge, not just "decent."
And this?
If you want a device that delivers maximum battery life for light web browsing, there's no question that you should get something with an Apple logo on it.
Except the top two champs on the Anandtech chart - champs which are way ahead of a fairly close pack - don't have such logos. If one is honestly trying to illustrate the simple point that Windows has a power problem, its a strange conclusion to draw.
Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing general purpose about Mac OS X as far as hardware support is concerned. Just like iOS, it only has to target a very small set of hardware configurations. Edit: as pointed out elsewhere, this doesn't excuse MS from not taking advantage of the same vertical integration on their own hardware...
Plus, consumers don't really care. They just want the better product. "Yes, Mac's get twice the battery life but Microsoft has to support more hardware" doesn't really cut it. Sure, I appreciate it, but when it comes time to spend $2000, I simply want to know that I'm getting my money's worth.
To some people, the one that supports more hardware is the better product. Especially when they are spending $2000.