Users hoping that the arrival of Windows 7 will lessen the power drain on Apple’s MacBook Pro notebook may have some hard news to face up to, as CNET’s Eric Lai discovered for a recent article he wrote. Running Windows 7 in Boot Camp caused one CNET reviewer’s battery life to fall by more than two-thirds.
In addition to this, virtualization software such as VMware Fusion suffer from the same complaints. Some blame Apple’s Boot Camp drivers (the last ones were released in April 2008) while others blame Windows’ bloated codebase. With Apple and Microsoft both trying to avoid responsibility for improving the experience, Windows 7’s reported improvements in power management will be moot for MacBook Pro users for a while.
If you’ve tested the Windows 7 beta on your MacBook and have any feedback to offer, let us know in the comments.
5 replies on “Report Finds Running Windows 7 on MacBook Pro Drains Battery Life Quickly”
That's almost certainly a firmware-driver problem, somewhere in that interaction. Saying it's a “bloated codebase” is paramount to saying “I have no clue, so I'm going to arbitrarily blame Windows.” I'm getting tired of even hearing the word “bloat,” because I don't think people know what it actually means.
2/3 drop is obviously massive. So hopefully this gets fixed. I'd be patient. It's obviously in Apple's best interest to release something if it's on their side, and if it's not, anything draining the battery on the MBP is likely going to impact other PC laptops with the same components. It's still pre-release, so let's withhold judgment.
That's almost certainly a firmware-driver problem, somewhere in that interaction. Saying it's a “bloated codebase” is paramount to saying “I have no clue, so I'm going to arbitrarily blame Windows.” I'm getting tired of even hearing the word “bloat,” because I don't think people know what it actually means.
2/3 drop is obviously massive. So hopefully this gets fixed. I'd be patient. It's obviously in Apple's best interest to release something if it's on their side, and if it's not, anything draining the battery on the MBP is likely going to impact other PC laptops with the same components. It's still pre-release, so let's withhold judgment.
Because we want a Mac to run OsX…..running windows is an added bonus. Try it the other way around, with an unstable hackintosh version and see where you get. Also, we buy the Mac because we're posers and we can afford it 🙂
And most mac users don't 'need' to run Windows, it's just nice to have it there.
I had to laugh at reading this – Windows 7 runs awesome on my HP laptop with battery life of @4.75 hours which is about 20% better than Vista – oh and I only spent 500 USD on it – Core 2 duo, 4 GB RAM – why would anyone buy an overpriced Mac just to end up 'needing' to run Windows on it?
I was really hoping for better battery life from W7.
I rarely get 2 hours with Vista on my late 2008 MacBook. The Mac hardware+Windows OS power management just s*cks on or off battery. (It runs a lot hotter with Vista than OS X — and all I'm doing most of the time in Vista is running Outlook or Visual Studio.)
I guess there's no real reason to upgrade yet, not even taking the outlandish amount of money MS wants.