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13" MBA battery life on Boot Camp Windows 7?
- Thread starter DeusEx
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Not for me. Recently figured out that Live Mesh eats up CPU, but even without that it's still sub 5 hours. I've been looking for a way to undervolt, but RMClock and ThrottleStop don't seem to work.
I have seen more like half that with Windows 7 running via BootCamp. It's really bad, and that's sad. I don't know why, either??? I think it must come down to Apple wanting to keep people on OS X and ensuring the drivers are all crap! I definitely found better drivers that performed better using 64-bit Windows 7 without BootCamp drivers and manually installing drivers downloaded from the web. However, I didn't go through the hassle since the new MBA allows 64-bit BootCamp of Windows 7.
I use parallels for some programs I need in Windows here and there. Battery life does not seem to degrade much. It's about the same as if I was watching netflix or running some other processor intensive programs.
My experience is that it is less than what I get on OS X. I'm usually hooked up to wireless and have things running in the background, so I usually only get about 5-6 hours on OS X. I'd say Windows is likely closer to 3-4 hours. First, Windows 7's power management isn't nearly as sophisticated as OS X's, and Apple's drivers aren't that great (probably from lack of priority).
I find that while it doesn't quite give you as much batterly life as OSX, it is definitely a steep improvement over previous versions of Windows. Particularly on the 13" model, you can probably eek out 4-5 hours, depending on how you set it up. I tend to have the 13" indoors a lot, and so I often have it set to 1 mark on the brightness scale. That, in itself, is an improvement from the 2-3 of Windows XP and Vista, from my experience.
Re-post old message: Real-Life Battery Capacity on 2010 MBA under Windows 7 on Bootca
Some time ago I posted message quoted below. Hope you will find it useful.
Real-Life Battery Capacity on 2010 MBA under Windows 7 on Bootcamp
Yesterday and today measured battery life under bootcamped Win 7. Machine is 2010 MBA Ultimate, Windows 64-bit.
(1) Yesterday, 10.40 p.m. - 11.30 p.m. = 50 minutes. Starting battery level 96%. Light browsing (5-10 tabs in Chrome with FlashBlock, 30% of flash content clicked-to-play), Outlook in the background. 20% brighteness. After 50 minutes, battery was at 85%.
(2) With battery at 85%, went to standby from 11.30 p.m. yesterday to 09.36 a.m. today, that is for 606 minutes. Resumed with 81% battery charge, that is 4% drain in 10 hours - seems OK given that this was neither hibernation nor hybrid sleep mode.
(3) Today, 09.36 - 12.47 = 191 minutes. 40% of time heavy word processing (several layers of comments and changes in track changes mode. 40% of time heavy excel files, 10+ tabs with VBA and macros. 5% of time Acrobat Pro, re-arranging PDFs and some OCR. 5% of time light browsing (5 tabs in Chrome with FlashBlock). Logitech nano receiver in USB port. 75% brighteness. Machine shut down at 4% battery level.
When awake, WiFi and BT were always on. Always running in background were usual Windows 7 stuff, as well as AV (Kaspersky), ABBYY Lingvo (English-Russian-Ukrainian dictionary), Skype, Outlook, Acrobat tray, Bootcamp, IPod service, Brother network scanner/printer control panel, couple of Windows 7 gadgets.
This brings me to just above 4 hours battery life at averaged medium load. This is given that starting battery level was 96%, and that 4% drained during standby. And I would like to reflect a bit on this:
(1) Very decent battery life as compared to my Sony Vaio Z i7, which never lasts beyond 3 hours at best (even when switched to IGP).
(2) My productivity in WinOffice is 15-20% higher than in MacOffice. This is (a) because I can customize it better; (b) because Windows works with Sharepoint much faster - even though MacOffice has Document Connection, it still sucks as opposed to WinOffice sharepoint integration features; and (c) Word for Mac has serious issues in handling multiple comments/revisions/deletions in 'track changes' mode - it starts slowing down and stuttering, which increases my idle time.
(3) I do not know what is wrong with me (or with MacOS), but system/interface/menu fonts under MacOS seem blurry to me, both on internal and external displays (I have NEC full HD 23" IPS screen). Windows fonts are crisp, sharp and always very readable -- and I believe this also adds to overall efficiency, at least because eyes are less strained and I do not get tired that quickly.
(4) Under same usage scenario, I was able to get just above 5 hours under MacOS on same machine (looks like Office is battery hungry, but I`Works lacks essential features I absolutely need).
Therefore, the 1-hour difference in battery life is mostly offset my by increased productivity under bootcamped Windows 7, which 2010 MBA handles very well.
Hope this post will be useful to some of you. Sorry for crap English.
Some time ago I posted message quoted below. Hope you will find it useful.
Real-Life Battery Capacity on 2010 MBA under Windows 7 on Bootcamp
Yesterday and today measured battery life under bootcamped Win 7. Machine is 2010 MBA Ultimate, Windows 64-bit.
(1) Yesterday, 10.40 p.m. - 11.30 p.m. = 50 minutes. Starting battery level 96%. Light browsing (5-10 tabs in Chrome with FlashBlock, 30% of flash content clicked-to-play), Outlook in the background. 20% brighteness. After 50 minutes, battery was at 85%.
(2) With battery at 85%, went to standby from 11.30 p.m. yesterday to 09.36 a.m. today, that is for 606 minutes. Resumed with 81% battery charge, that is 4% drain in 10 hours - seems OK given that this was neither hibernation nor hybrid sleep mode.
(3) Today, 09.36 - 12.47 = 191 minutes. 40% of time heavy word processing (several layers of comments and changes in track changes mode. 40% of time heavy excel files, 10+ tabs with VBA and macros. 5% of time Acrobat Pro, re-arranging PDFs and some OCR. 5% of time light browsing (5 tabs in Chrome with FlashBlock). Logitech nano receiver in USB port. 75% brighteness. Machine shut down at 4% battery level.
When awake, WiFi and BT were always on. Always running in background were usual Windows 7 stuff, as well as AV (Kaspersky), ABBYY Lingvo (English-Russian-Ukrainian dictionary), Skype, Outlook, Acrobat tray, Bootcamp, IPod service, Brother network scanner/printer control panel, couple of Windows 7 gadgets.
This brings me to just above 4 hours battery life at averaged medium load. This is given that starting battery level was 96%, and that 4% drained during standby. And I would like to reflect a bit on this:
(1) Very decent battery life as compared to my Sony Vaio Z i7, which never lasts beyond 3 hours at best (even when switched to IGP).
(2) My productivity in WinOffice is 15-20% higher than in MacOffice. This is (a) because I can customize it better; (b) because Windows works with Sharepoint much faster - even though MacOffice has Document Connection, it still sucks as opposed to WinOffice sharepoint integration features; and (c) Word for Mac has serious issues in handling multiple comments/revisions/deletions in 'track changes' mode - it starts slowing down and stuttering, which increases my idle time.
(3) I do not know what is wrong with me (or with MacOS), but system/interface/menu fonts under MacOS seem blurry to me, both on internal and external displays (I have NEC full HD 23" IPS screen). Windows fonts are crisp, sharp and always very readable -- and I believe this also adds to overall efficiency, at least because eyes are less strained and I do not get tired that quickly.
(4) Under same usage scenario, I was able to get just above 5 hours under MacOS on same machine (looks like Office is battery hungry, but I`Works lacks essential features I absolutely need).
Therefore, the 1-hour difference in battery life is mostly offset my by increased productivity under bootcamped Windows 7, which 2010 MBA handles very well.
Hope this post will be useful to some of you. Sorry for crap English.