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Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

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Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#241

Post by wfunction »

baddox wrote: post #238
programminggeek wrote: post #183

When 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…

It's interesting to compare this to what I have read (and experienced) about Linux vs. Windows battery life on laptops. Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but it used to be that Linux delivered far worse battery life than Windows.

As of my last experiences, it still does.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#242

Post by XorNot »

JVIDEL wrote: post #222
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No doubt on the quality but the reality here is that even with proprietary hardware and thus able to optimize everything for the surface like apple does it this has a low battery life. It's all the x86 baggage windows has, osx threw everything from the powerpc years away, let alone the stuff from the previous 20 years of systemOS. Windows still carries crap from when 32mb of ram was more expensive than a computer tod…

I seriously doubt it's x86 baggage. You don't pay a battery life penalty for code you don't execute.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#243

Post by vor_ »

nbevans wrote: post #95
optymizer wrote: post #30

Well, how about this: because MS doesn't care. It's too late, the code is too large and too old, the developers are too new, no one knows what's going on and this whole thing is a giant rolling monster with parts flying out every second, killing innocent batteries.

I would argue that the Windows NT kernel is both newer and more maintainable for Microsoft than OSX is for Apple. At the core of OSX is a ton of legacy Unix monolith written in the 70s that I suspect very few in Apple dare ever touch. This can be seen by the fact that Microsoft has never shied away from improving their OS kernel. Recent stand-out improvements such as ASLR, UAC, TRIM support for SSDs, timer coalescing…

Darwin wasn't written in the 70s, and the foundations are regularly updated. The source code is publicly available. Your speculation that few in Apple dare touch it, as if it's some indecipherable monstrosity, is nonsense.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#244

Post by jasomill »

aroch wrote: post #177
fetbaffe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows UAC is the best I have used on any platform. What I can remember it was not that good on OSX. Not even Ubuntu gets this right. However the permission system on Windows is a hassle. I always have a normal user account and an seperate admin account. The normal account does not have sudo permission. This setup on Ubuntu and what I can remember on OSX is not hassle free because a lot of installers and apps assume…

>This setup on Ubuntu and what I can remember on OSX is not hassle free because a lot of installers and apps assumes normal user has some sort of sudo. On OSX you get an elevated privileges login prompt for any installer needing to write to / and even for many write protected folders inside your own homedir. You can grant rights as any user you want simply by entering that username (it's automatically populated with…

This is true for properly written installers and apps, but since not everything is properly written, a related problem does crop up from time to time: an installer or app assumes the user has permissions to something that the "admin" group usually has access to, and therefore doesn't bother using the correct API to elevate. Even here, though, in the typical cases of installers and updaters, there are easy workarounds that at least don't require logging out or giving additional rights to the logged-in user: fast user switch or login(1) to an admin user, then retry from there.

The only thing Windows does differently here is that it provides a silent, non-admin workaround (filesystem and registry virtualization) for buggy applications, which works, but which can be problematic in other ways. Most notably, while OS-level workarounds are a clear win for older and otherwise unsupported software, they reduce motivation for developers to fix bugs in current software papered over by Windows' workarounds.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#245

Post by mbrubeck »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #227
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 3rd party manufacturers are doing to Microsoft's brand what Mac clones did to Apple in the early 90s. I’m not sure whether that’s a fitting analogy. The Mac clone program was launched for other companies to build cheap computers with low margins, so that Apple could continue serving the higher end markets while MacOS would gain marketshare. Instead, clone makers ended up building very high end machines that were fa…

I agree. And some of the clone makers offered a better customer experience than Apple, too. For example, Power Computing had a great online store before Apple did.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#246

Post by Samuel_Michon »

mbrubeck wrote: post #245
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3rd party manufacturers are doing to Microsoft's brand what Mac clones did to Apple in the early 90s. I’m not sure whether that’s a fitting analogy. The Mac clone program was launched for other companies to build cheap computers with low margins, so that Apple could continue serving the higher end markets while MacOS would gain marketshare. Instead, clone makers ended up building very high end machines that were fa…

I agree. And some of the clone makers offered a better customer experience than Apple, too. For example, Power Computing had a great online store before Apple did.

True, and their ad campaigns were fresh too. “We’re fighting back for Mac!”

http://imgur.com/Bfl7LkZ

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#247

Post by greedo »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #220
devx wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

imagine owning a race car team. For years you buy cars from Ferrari. Finally, you're forced to make your own. While in 5 years you will certainly have a better understanding of the car, V1 of your new product will certainly be a bit inferior.

S/Yugo/Ferrari/

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#248

Post by dragontamer »

JVIDEL wrote: post #222
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No doubt on the quality but the reality here is that even with proprietary hardware and thus able to optimize everything for the surface like apple does it this has a low battery life. It's all the x86 baggage windows has, osx threw everything from the powerpc years away, let alone the stuff from the previous 20 years of systemOS. Windows still carries crap from when 32mb of ram was more expensive than a computer tod…

Mac OSX runs all of that x86 baggage as well.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#249

Post by kyberias »

corresation wrote: post #153
kyberias wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but that really is not an answer at all. It's just a fairly obvious GUESS.

It might be a guess, but it's one that we know is almost certainly correct. Windows has an enormous amount of legacy code, and behaviors that were perfectly fine even just a few years ago now can devastate battery life. Windows is an eminently pluggable system, fully able to take advantage of low power states in hardware, ACPI, etc. Fundamentally there is no reason for it to be a power pig. But it is, because the cho…

> "almost certainly correct".

Yes, that's why I wrote it's an obvious guess.

> Windows has an enormous amount of legacy code, and behaviors that were perfectly fine even just a few years ago now can devastate battery life.

Ok, you seem to know this. Can you tell us now EXACTLY what legacy code is there in Windows that causes the "busy-loops" and bad battery performance?

> But it is, because the choices made in it were made for a different world of computing.

That's a very vague statement. What choices exactly?

Come on people, anyone can make these claims! This is almost the same as saying: "There is some software in Windows that is causing the bad battery performance." It's patently tautological!

The other guess is "there's some power-hungry components in Windows devices causing it!"

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#250

Post by temac »

XorNot wrote: post #242
JVIDEL wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt on the quality but the reality here is that even with proprietary hardware and thus able to optimize everything for the surface like apple does it this has a low battery life. It's all the x86 baggage windows has, osx threw everything from the powerpc years away, let alone the stuff from the previous 20 years of systemOS. Windows still carries crap from when 32mb of ram was more expensive than a computer tod…

I seriously doubt it's x86 baggage. You don't pay a battery life penalty for code you don't execute.

True. What is fun is that you could imagine a technology where you would (powering down some unused memory chips), but I don't know if this would be worth it.
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