I'm sorry to say this, but windows 7 certainly didn't reduce my netbook's power consumption, but instead made my battery life shorter. What does this mean? it means it consumes more power.
Many sites has done many tests to see if this "claim" was true. And after all, it wasn't true.
In order to consume less power, the OS itself will need to use less system resources. That's the keypoint.

Considering all the hype and hot air it probably has greatly contributed to global warming.

Perhaps this what's being fixed for the RTM version. Remember, what we're using is still beta.

Considering that Win7 isn't finalized, nor are you using the recommended Win7 version on your netbook (i.e. Starter Edition)...

maybe you should read that the win7 rc is by default the ultimate version and not the netbook version. TH just did an article about it last week.

Yeah, but this article "didn't" specify which version. It simply said Windows 7.


Starter Edition is the "included" OS in order to keep costs down. Not necessarily for netbooks. (If I read some articles right )
Didn't expect to have thumbs down, cause it was my point of view.

yes, if win7 power management had the sophistication of RM cpu clock utility.

Good thing. Did anyone else see the battery life vs watt hours for laptops on Anandtech? Macs had double the ammount as Windows Laptops.

Does this mean the Windows 7 scheduler will work properly with AMD's Phenom I chips with Cool 'n Quiet enabled, the way Vista didn't?

I saw worse battery performance than Vista, XP, Linux and OSX with both the Beta and the RC (using a MBP) but I'm currently testing the RTM. We'll have to see how it does. So far, it doesn't seem too bad, but I need to do some more timed runs.

Windows 7 will reduce power consumption by automatically turning off your computer for 30 minute intervals every 60 minutes it is turned on...

I would agree that this could help reducing energy consumption, though many (business) users are probably turning it off anyway since they don't want the screen to go dark (i.e. during presentations) and are not concerned about running the computer idle.
I think the biggest savings still would come from hardware changes, but how the OS manages each component (when not in use) certainly leaves enough room for improvement which I am excited about. (I.e. shut down the PhysX card since it's really not used most of the time)

People are rating down Aspire for not buying into improved safemode/hibernation as a way to justify saying Windows 7 is more power efficient?

Freaking fanboys. From what I've seen in Windows 7 RC, it has a lower memory footprint, runs stable, has minimal driver issues, a slightly improved GUI, good performance (I've seen gains in FPS even when compared to Windows XP), and overall is a nice improvement over Vista. That said, Microsoft has done very little to prove any of their claims that 7's more power efficient and all early indications show that it, as Aspire has pointed out, actually uses MORE power.

And using the "its not the starter addition" as the excuse is a joke. Who's going to be using the crappy starter edition anyway? I'm not. If you people aren't just enthusiasts, and actual professionals, maybe you should start looking at an OS as an OS, and take both the benefits and limitations in consideration, rather than dancing around with huge smiles on your faces worshiping Bill Gates.

I’d love to believe this but the only things that have been reduced with each Windows iteration is the amount of hard disk space and memory available on my pc

I just can't believe they are sticking with the name Windows 7...

It doesn't take much to outdo Millennium II, aka Vista with it's never ending hard drive access for no apparent reason.

I'll believe it when I see it. My tablet has been running hotter since installing 7RC than it ever did on Vista...

I don't see much of a difference on my notebook.

Be happy that you can run it on that netbook most likely atom with 1gb memory.The bottom line is that Microsoft is releasing a better product this time and this time we will hopefully see less system resources being used then XP or Vista.

fulle:

I rated him down like i guess many others because he simply stated it did use more power.
This is his conclusion after running on one netbook and most likely running the RC.
Also he did not state what options he used or tried to use to conserve power or what version of the OS he tested against what version of which other OS.
His post has a very high i was first so i will spew some random shit out rating even though this doesnt have to be the case.

You might have read some of my other posts and know i am by far a fanboy for any type of OS or hardware (maybe a bit pegasos fan though).
That being said i have to say i came to the conclusion a long time ago that windows vista uses way more power on both my desktops as on my laptop then XP and linux less then XP this however depends on your settings and if you just "ok/next" the installation there is not much difference between any of them.
However windows 7 now comes close to linux while i have less work to get the power saving features to work.
If they tweak it some more it might even get better over time and beat linux from its pedestal.

Keep in mind that linux is way more tweakable then windows and this might be the reason why i get better results though its still cool to see that windows 7 can be more energy efficient then XP while using more resources.

The active power efficiency improvements consist pretty much of 7 reducing power to a disconnected network card. Lets not kid ourselves.

It's good to see that the next release of both Apple and Microsoft's flagship OS focusing on reducing power consumption. Better for all of us and mother Earth.

Even AMD's CoolCore and Intel's variant in the Core i7 is a great step forward to a greener solution.

But the article did say "Windows 7 to Reduce Energy Consumption"

That means "in the future" as in, when windows 7 is actually released.

What are you people on? Windows 7 has hit Release Candidate stage and is probably at or close to RTM (haven't bothered to look at the dates for that). This means it is already feature complete. Stop using the "oh it's a beta" excuse, because it's long out of beta now. If the feature isn't already implemented, it won't exist until SP1.

not in my case - XP was able to hibernate my computer no problem, win7 crashes when hibernating

Good question.

Anyone... anyone... Bueller?

I remember a trick I found on a mobile site to set the Mode con delay and rate of a computer lower.

But I don't expect Windows7 to do that automatically.
As things stand now with the RC, Windows 7 RC1 still uses more battery than my XP; sorry MS.
Sure it has some powersaving feats that XP does not have, but in program loadtimes, background activity, etc.. it still is the underdog for XP.

I almost want to bet, that the powersaving feats of Windows 7 better than XP, are limited to idle and coming out of idle/powering up or powering down; and hibernation.
I highly doubt Windows 7 uses less battery in normal program operating conditions.
It is an OS with a larger footprint after all. They either need to cripple the OS, limit it's performance or disable functions to make it match with XP.

I still plead here that MS might work on expanding their Defrag program, making it more advanced, and also making their OS more compatible with MLC SSD's!
If MS really want to improve their OS, they might want to modify defrag to sort all the bootup files on the outer sectors of the disk, as well as by standard sort files in their directories on the disk.
Having a program boot where it's first .dll is found on the inner sectors on the disk, and the second .dll on the outter, makes the arm of the hd continuously seek for files. That could easily be avoided by just sorting files in folders, and defragging folder by folder, leaving small spaces after frequently modified files.

Large files (eg: those above 100MB), can easily be placed in the inner circle (inner sectors) where the HD performs slower, for usually they need very little access times (given the files are defragmented), and most of the larger files are either .dat files, or .mpg/.avi/.divx/.ogv/.mkv movie files. They need no high speeds to display.
Also uninstall data, driver rollback data, and restore points, that need no frequent accessing can be placed in the slower parts of the HD.

MLC SSD's need a complete different methode of file defragmentation. On those SSD's it might be interesting that frequently modified files find themselves in smaller cells, or in a single level cell,while those smaller files that are less modified are better to share cells.
That should boost up the write times.

If MS would work on that for the release of Win 7, I'm sure it's going to be very hard to create an OS that will be improved over that.

It's almost like Windows XP, and Vista are to an OS what .wma and .mp3 is to music. If XP equals .mp3, and Vista equals .wma; then Windows 7 will be like .ogg. And to find a compression algorithm that has a higher compression ratio over Quality than .ogg is very difficult, to nearly impossible to develop.
If MS would develop this defrag improvement, I'm sure we'll purchase this OS, that will probably not be beat in the coming 10 years!

Though I did not rate you down for your comment, since I agree with some of it, my findings of installing Windows 7 RC1 on my notebook (an older C2Duo 1,66Ghz from 2006) where that Windows 7 clearly has a higher footprint and uses more power than XP.
True, I did tweak XP, and get a battery life of round about 4,5 to 5 hours at it's best with the extended battery, and 3,5hours with my standard battery.
Doing the same in Windows 7 (Which was running a bittorrent client on wifi until battery shutdown, and a second run browsing internet via LAN), I got about between 3,1 or 3,2 hours on the standard battery, about 4,3 hours or 4,5 hours at most on my extension battery.

One of the other reasons I can clearly see the difference, is with XP my notebook's fan hardly rotates. With 7 I noted that regularly the fan speeds up to a certain speed for a couple of seconds, only to return in it's low rotation mode later on.
The fan basically cools the graphics card and the CPU, no other parts;(Graphics card being an older Intel graphics card it would not surprise me if it was a 90nm design, with a 65nm C2duo).
In any case the difference is obvious on my notebook. Windows 7 runs hotter on my notebook. But not as hot as Vista.
On Linux, I think I seldomly or never really hear the fan come on. That is, a linux that has a program installed that allows my processor to downclock in idle moments to 800Mhz. But if you take an Ubuntu, with Kompiz (the 3D cube desktop), there might be times when the processor get taxed more and the notebook uses more battery than any other linux.