Windows 7 worse on netbook battery life than XP?

By Eric Lai

August 24, 2009 05:54 PM ET

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Windows 7

Be patient, says analyst

Jack Gold, an independent research analyst, says that it's still too early to condemn Windows 7. "[With release candidates,] Microsoft often has debug code inserted to find and document problems, and the code is not optimized," Gold said. "Same is true of the preliminary drivers available."

Drivers are not written by Microsoft, but by the component makers themselves, he said. Rather than simply recycling their Vista drivers, the hardware vendors need the final release of Windows 7, which only arrived last month, and "a little time to perform their magic."

While existing Windows XP netbooks may miss out on some of these optimizations, future models that ship with Windows 7 pre-installed may eventually have the same or longer battery life than XP that Microsoft has promised.

"It does not trouble me that current machines have less than optimum battery life, or performance for that matter. With all the resources Windows 7 will use on a device, optimization will take a little while to complete," Gold said.

Read more about windows in Computerworld's Windows Knowledge Center.

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