Windows Vista Aero glass sucks up batteries juice

Posted by multippt

Aero Glass is touted as on of Windows Vista’s most wanted feature. Yet, there is a price to pay when you want this feature. It has been found that using Aero Glass on Windows Vista drains out the battery’s juice much more faster than compared to using Windows XP on the same notebook.

However, if Aero Glass is disabled on Windows Vista, the computer actually lasts longer compared to Windows XP using the same battery [unplugged to the mains].

Although Windows Vista has been touted as having better power management, having Aero Glass on doesn’t make this convincing. This probably lies within the defaults, and if the settings were tweaked, the power hog problem won’t become too much of an issue. Microsoft even encourages PC makers to tweak the power settings.

However, Windows Aero Glass doesn’t seem to put too much load on the computer, since even if Aero Glass was disabled, the computer still runs as fast as with Aero Glass active. Thus, the problem could be due to the inefficiency of power management when Windows Vista deals with Aero Glass.

This power hog issue was not something new. The problem was aready apparent during the Windows Vista betas, and while Windows Vista now performs much better compared to it’s historical betas, it still has a long way to go before it can be said as being “more power efficient than before”.

While PC makers would help create power-efficient hardware, Microsoft for it’s part, would release updates and tweaks to improve Windows Vista’s battery life and performances.