Tired of your wimpy laptop battery kicking out too early?

I, for one, have just about had it with my two-year-old Vista-equipped HP laptop, which practically laughs at me every time I attempt more than twenty-five minutes of work sans power cord.

In an attempt to help ramp up excitement for its upcoming Windows 7, Microsoft has now promised that their new Windows 7 Operating System (OS) could help improve the battery life of your PC.

If a recent Microsoft demo is to be believed, the improvements could be dramatic. When the company used two identical laptops running the same DVD in a demonstration this past Tuesday, the one with Windows 7 installed ran for 20 per cent longer than the one equipped with Windows Vista, released in early 2007.

"Significant Amount of Battery Savings"

According to Microsoft, users who make the upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 can expect anywhere from a ten to twenty per cent boost in the battery life of their systems -- at least, when they're watching a DVD.

"We're achieving a very significant amount of battery savings," quipped Microsoft's program manager Ruston Panabaker. (Source: cnet.com)

Still, the company hasn't yet pinpointed exactly how much battery life a user who employs Windows 7 rather than Vista can save, and they haven't gone on to say whether functions other than merely watching a DVD have improved either.

Demos Suggest Win7 Might Beat XP, Too

The demonstration took place at an event held by both Microsoft and Intel in hopes of demonstrating the advancements the two companies have made in the transition to Windows 7. Specific areas of interest include overall performance, system virtualization, and power management.

Of course, the more fascinating comparison may be the one recently reported by PC Magazine: in a comparison of two identical IBM ThinkPad T400s, one running Win7 and the other XP SP2, the former lasted an additional 1.4 hours. (Source: pcmag.com)