Windows has better power usage...

[PrimoTurbo]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=880&num=2

Well that's unfortunate...

[-grubby]

this has no relevance....all were only 7 or less watts apart from each other. And also, before you can declare ANYTHING you have to test on a very large amount of hardware. I'm sure if you did what the last sentence said that each one would be very varied

[drascus]

Ok I didn't read the link I will admit. However I will give my first had experience. Under Windows XP Home edition on my Compaq presario v2000 I was getting about 2 hours of battery life (Which sucks by the way). OK With Ubuntu 7.04 I get anywhere from 2 1/2 hours to 3 hours depending on how bright I keep my screen. Now thats nothing to write home about but it is better. Also I think that with 7.10's new power features these stats will be improved.

[adamklempner]

I wonder if the Windows installs had antivirus, antispyware, etc. (the necessary stuff) software installed and running?

[vishzilla]

These tests are irrelevent, you never know the test results may differ with some other laptop or desktop.

[Polygon]

they even say



Granted, this test isn't very controlled and was just intended to give a rough overview.

[sstusick]

The batterly life on my laptop on Windows is about 1 hour 30 mins... Ubuntu gives me just under 3 hours of battery life.

[tehhaxorr]

The batterly life on my laptop on Windows is about 1 hour 30 mins... Ubuntu gives me just under 3 hours of battery life.

I have the exact opposite effect.

In Vista's power saver mode i get about 4.5 hours, in Kubuntu it's more like, 3 hours in power save.

[PartisanEntity]

I have the feeling that my Turion powered laptop does a little better on battery in Windows than in Ubuntu. Either way it is a terrible processor for mobile computers, I am lucky if I can get 2 hours out of it.

[Onyros]

I have the feeling that my Turion powered laptop does a little better on battery in Windows than in Ubuntu. Either way it is a terrible processor for mobile computers, I am lucky if I can get 2 hours out of it.I was once all cavalier about AMD's processors, even bought a laptop which had an Athlon 2500+ mobile just for the sake of it (btw, those were brilliant desktop processors for overclocking).

When I found out that an equivalent Pentium M 1400MHz ran faster and kept people running on battery twice as much or even more... There was no contest. There was no possibility for being cavalier :lolflag:

AMD never got it right in laptops.

[PartisanEntity]

I was once all cavalier about AMD's processors, even bought a laptop which had an Athlon 2500+ mobile just for the sake of it (btw, those were brilliant desktop processors for overclocking).

When I found out that an equivalent Pentium M 1400MHz ran faster and kept people running on battery twice as much or even more... There was no contest. There was no possibility for being cavalier :lolflag:

AMD never got it right in laptops.

Well ironically a friend of mine has the Turion X2 (the dual core version) and that not only runs for longer on the battery but it is also silent in comparison to the Turion.

Have a look at the Turion X2 specs, I think that is quite an improvement on mobile processors from AMD.

[argie]

I saw this too, and maybe we should look and see if there are any processes running that are unnecessary. Also, do CPU scaling features work on all Operating Systems tested there?

[conphara]

A part of the thruth lies in the background programmes such as Tracker which runs all the time and therefore sucks watts out of the battery.
A decent / fair test has to be made where all components are equal; so turn off Tracker, Compiz Fusion, Aero and whatever Vista has that runs in the background.
I read somewhere that Gnome Power Manager checks all the time to keep track of an aquerate estimation which is good to have an aquerate estimate but sucks if checks all the time. Would be nice if it only checked say every 10 mins or whatever you could force it to.
I made an comparison with a friend of mine and his Vista was using about 600 mb of ram just to have a plain desktop (read:without any programmes running) and my Ubuntu (Gnome) used only about 300 mb of ram. I had disabled one service (cups) and everything else was running as default.
The kernel is getting better every day so when Hardy Heron comes out I hope that a lot of focus has been put into the power savings.
I'm using Feisty with the Gutsy kernel (.22.9) and I can have an uptime for about 3,5 hours with Wifi enabled from start to finish, the backlight at a minimum, no compiz and surfing the web. Thats OK and plenty of mins, with XP its about the same. I dont really care about counting mins if they're about the same. If Windows had 5 hours of battery time and Ubuntu had 3,5 hours, I would start to worry.
When I get Gutsy installed on thursday I wont be using Tracker (and some other services) for instance, so thats just more watts saved right there. Compiz; only when I want to impress people. Even some Mac users disables the zoom effect on the dock and only has a plain panel.

Read more on:
http://www.lesswatts.org/

[nonewmsgs]

this has no relevance....all were only 7 or less watts apart from each other. And also, before you can declare ANYTHING you have to test on a very large amount of hardware. I'm sure if you did what the last sentence said that each one would be very varied

+1

[Paqman]

You know, it's not inconceivable that Linux isn't the best at everything ;)

As for criticising the methodology, the results were fairly close between all systems, so I suspect you'd be struggling to get them to diverge too far either way.

Must be an interesting read for the kernel bods, though...