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Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

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Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#191

Post by bal00ns »

nbevans wrote: post #150
hannibal5 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For mobile applications Windows has been constantly behind Android and iOS. One part of Nokia's problems was that MS could not deliver drivers for new hardware. For example, Nokia could not move to high resolution screens because Windows could not handle them. Being constantly 6-12 months behind because software is not up to dates was devastating.

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.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#192

Post by rwolf »

Touche wrote: post #98
SEMW wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A quick Google search shows many Windows laptops with equivalent or better battery life. I don't want to state the obvious, but different laptops have different capacity batteries. Atwood was comparing the 11" MBA to the Surface Pro 2 as they have similar battery capacities (SP2: 42 Wh, MBA: 38 Wh), and - as Maakuth notes -- are both made by companies in control of both software and hardware. The fact that you can…

Yes, of course, Windows can be comparable on similar capacities. Does this need to be stated? Go read the reviews of some Acer or Samsung laptops. Extrapolating the problems of the Surface 2 to all computers with the same OS doesn't make sense. Microsoft isn't experienced at making computers, shouldn't be a surprise that they are bad at it right now.

I'm puzzled, your comments seem to claim simultaneously that:

* There is not a battery life problem on Windows machines.

* The battery life problem on Windows machines is not surprising.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#193

Post by devx »

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…

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.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#194

Post by sirkneeland »

macspoofing wrote: post #162
mistermann wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But both Windows and Linux are more than capable to get this all sorted. Like Google showed with the Nexus 7 - focus is all that's needed. It's just harder for Microsoft considering everything they need to juggle. Couldn't they just hire someone and say "Fix this. Identify the problem and we will support your findings to get the fix implemented." It's not like they lack the financial means. I just don't think there…

>Couldn't they just hire someone and say "Fix this. Identify the problem and we will support your findings to get the fix implemented. Power conservation is more of a mantra, rather than a feature. If you decide that this is your priority, it should infuse every feature and every aspect of the OS. This can absolutely be done, and Microsoft is more than capable to cater to this need. I'd like to know why they haven't…

The infusion of Nokia engineers long familiar with engineering for battery life should help

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#195

Post by mjg59 »

dingaling wrote: post #72
mjg59 wrote: post #45

Because Apple have custom ACPI methods for cutting power to unused components and Windows doesn't know how to call them.

I doubt very much that the commodity hardware in Apple laptops exposes any ACPI methods of which other operating systems are unaware. They are the same components as widely used, just packaged differently ( as lspci from Linux on an Apple machine will show ). From memory the only Apple-branded components were the SD card readers and the keyboard. And how would Intel / Nvidia / Broadcom / Samsung / LG / whomever be pe…

You might doubt it, but it's entirely true. Apple aggressively cut power to unused devices and provide out of band mechanisms to generate wakeup notifications. Apple will entirely cut power to an SDHCI or Thunderbolt controller that's not in use. Windows won't.

There's nothing secret about this. Anyone who spends a while looking at the ACPI tables will see it. Recent versions of ACPI provide a standardised mechanism for doing this, but Apple have chosen to continue using their custom implementation.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#196

Post by conradev »

__david__ wrote: post #111
paol wrote: post #100

Earlier 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...

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.

The Darwin kernel scales down as far as an HDMI adapter SoC[1]

[1] https://www.panic.com/blog/2013/03/the-lightning-digital-av-...

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#197

Post by woodchuck64 »

Why does Windows have terrible battery life? Most likely for the same general reason Microsoft is losing slowly but steadily in all areas: it takes more effort and manpower to get Windows OS to perform in a particular area than it does to get a Linux-variant OS to perform. That's the fundamental implication of better design.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#198

Post by blinkingled »

macspoofing wrote: post #155
blinkingled wrote: post #93

Windows and Linux are general purpose OSes. The same kernel runs on high throughput servers and low power tablets. The apps are written with little focus on battery life. The drivers too. Microsoft doesn't write their own drivers and then there's firmware too. It's the one area where Apple has really taken advantage of the vertical integration - they do everything from firmware to most apps people use. But both Windo…

>Windows and Linux are general purpose OSes. The same kernel runs on high throughput servers and low power tablets. The apps are written with little focus on battery life. What are you saying? That Microsoft can't build a consumer OS with great power-management because the kernel also needs to work on high throughput servers? Come on. >But both Windows and Linux are more than capable to get this all sorted. Bingo. So…

> Microsoft can't build a consumer OS with great power-management because the kernel also needs to work on high throughput servers?

Not only servers but they need the same kernel design to work well across a ton of different hardware/firmware combinations, form factors (Phone, Tablets, Laptops) and they do an OK job. But to excel they need to put in a lot more effort (working with OEMs, working with SoC makers is another challenge - everyone optimizes for Android now a days including Qualcomm and Nvidia). So yes, they can do it but it is exponentially more challenging for them due to their legacy and current market position.

Re: Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?

#199

Post by rubinelli »

devx wrote: post #193
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…

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.

Isn't Windows RT as close as it gets to a OS from scratch nowadays? (honest question)
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