Battery life in XP VS VISTA
 

Will the operating system effect battery life?

I have a dell 1525 and I believe it has a 6cell battery and the battery does not last long at all. I was wondering if going back to XP instead of the Vista it has will change how long it lasts.

Thanks, Eric

Marginally. Vista is more GPU and CPU intensive, particularly with Aero enabled, drawing more power. I don't think I've seen any good comparisons on battery life, but I wouldn't expect more than a 10% increase in life. On a 2 hour battery, that'd be about 12 minutes. :)

You could try enabling some of the power save modes and lowering the brightness of the LCD, as well.

In comparison, no it does not matter. Each one has dozens of options you can change, and services can be disabled as well. Hardware has an effect as well, and one power-hungry machine could run either OS, thereby skewing the result for a given OS.

I run vista on my 17in laptop and get a full 4 hours of battery. If I mess with the power settings (even trying a "lower power" setting) I get less. Counter-intuitive, I know. It's just options that have to be tweaked. BTW my current settings run aero and several other programs, including a fan control program that keeps my dell fan at full blast.

The OS does not affect battery performance alone. As mentioned, Vista requires more GPU power for Aero. You can, however, turn off the Aero effects, thus negating that change. It does not increase CPU usage but nominally. Vista DOES offer a greater array of power management, but those are somewhat dependent on your hardware and what ACPI it supports. It might be valid to contact Dell support and get an "official" answer from them.