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Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

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Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#301

Post by Steko »

rythie wrote: post #283
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…

Why do you think this is about the hardware at all? Most of the savings are down to software (try Windows or Linux on the Macbook Air). It requires lots of hard work to change the kernel to make better use of sleep state and to reduce CPU utilisation in apps. The reality is that Apple cares about battery life, because they know users do, they work constantly on this. Numerous Apple announcements talk up battery life…

This is exactly right. How many phone vendors besides Apple are shipping CPUs underclocked to 1.3 Ghz in their flagship phones?

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#302

Post by azernik »

justincormack wrote: post #164
__david__ wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know they still use the Darwin kernel in iOS. Which means it scales from desktops and servers all the way down to phones... That seems pretty general purpose to me.

No one uses Darwin for servers, not even Apple.

I'm pretty sure some of these [1] are still floating around - they were only discontinued two years ago.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#304

Post by VladRussian2 »

When you have lets say 4 CPU cores and 1 active thread, Windows [by default config] wouldn't let the other CPU cores go into deep sleep [core parking] by intentionally moving the active thread from core to core. That supposedly improves performance on some tests as bringing a core from deep sleep takes some time noticeable by the tests. Keeping the cores "warm" also means increased power consumption.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#306

Post by vxNsr »

dragontamer wrote: post #268
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know much about semiconductors, but Apple started shipping x86 Macs when Intel had just switched to the Core architecture. I can imagine that Apple didn’t bother to write for technologies that were present in earlier Intel chips. Apple has only shipped Intel-powered computers with Core and Xeon chipsets (the first gen AppleTV ran on a Pentium M, though). “The Core microarchitecture is a major architectural re…

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/what-is-pae-nx-... Microsoft didn't bother either. SSE2 and PAE requirements mean a Netburst or later Intel Chip. (or K8 or later from AMD). So Windows8 requires a relatively modern chip, and ignores the earlier ones. IIRC, Windows 8 and 8.1 take advantage of the new P-States in Haswell / Clover Trail. (And connected standby on Clover Trail definitely shows that Microsoft…

I was actually wondering about that... most of these ultrabooks have a Y or U trail which basically translates to underpowered and throttled CPU.

Apple doesn't really say which SKU they're using, Microsoft also hides that info. Which kinda makes you wonder...

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#307

Post by easytiger »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #82
easytiger wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue has to be engineering. Did... did you just invent the technology version of Fr Jack's "That would be an ecumenical matter."

Reminds me also of Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister , who dodge constituents' questions with "That would be an administrative matter, you must ask Sir Humphrey" and "That would be a policy matter, you must ask the minister", respectively, until one woman complains that they always shift the blame to the other, and Sir Humphrey makes a long, obfuscating speech about the administration of policy vs t…

Love that show. What happened to us being able to do funny TV?

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#309

Post by dnautics »

wfunction wrote: post #241
baddox wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ubuntu runs ~six hours on my 3 year old dell vostro that's rated for four hours on windows.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#310

Post by znowi »

I'm actually saddened by the fact that we consider 8 hours of battery life satisfactory, and 14 hours nothing short of astronomical. Anything less than a full day work for a mobile device should be unacceptable.

Smartphones are particularly bad at it. If anyone remembers Palm devices, they could last for more than a week (!) on one charge. With my Nexus 4, even with light usage, I've come to a habit to plug it in whenever possible, it goes that fast.

We all love feature-rich devices, but I think, currently, the promoted features and hardware are way ahead of the battery capabilities. And it's not OK.

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