Windows 7 worse on netbook battery life than XP?

Windows 7 cuts almost a third off the battery life of some netbooks shipping today with Windows XP, several recent reviews and user reports say.

Laptop magazine reported in its blog on Monday that during a recent test, a Toshiba netbook lost 2.5 hours of battery life when running Windows 7 instead of XP, or about 30 percent (6:53 for Windows 7, versus 9:24 for XP).

Web site Tom's Hardware found last month that an Acer Aspire One netbook running Windows 7's release candidate lasted 2.5 hours less than when it ran Windows XP Service Pack 3 (5:54 versus 8:28, when both were at a low-power idle state).

Complaints have also surfaced on netbook user forums such as eeeuser.com, for Asus Eee users, AspireOneUser.com, for Acer netbook users, and MSIWind.net, for MSI fans.

The complaints follow gripes that Windows 7 hastens the vampire-like battery drain of running Windows on MacBooks, either in virtualization or via Apple's Boot Camp software.

:story: Full story: InfoWorld