Today, more than 50% of sold computers are notebooks, so all OS have to provide better power management in order to get the best ratio between performance and battery lifetime. Recently, CNET showed that Snow Leopard improved battery lifetime of a MacBook Pro 17", especially when idle. Indeed, power consumption decreased by 4.4 W, improving overall lifetime by 10 to 15%, even though it drains 4% more power when fully loaded.
When comparing Vista and Windows 7, the battery lifetime increase by... 1.4 hour! This is a huge improvement, however one should also remember than Vista was particularly not optimized for notebook and its power management tools were minimal. Microsoft seems to have taken note of the increasing number of notebooks among the worldwide computer market and the increasing need of lifetime necessary for mobile users. Windows can now take advantages of the technology improvements made by Intel on its CPU and chipset.
