stuart test blog

A lot of people have been complaining about Windows Vista’s poor battery life and now the bigger news outlets are picking up on it too. CNet reported that OEMs are resorting to their own power management tools to try to squeeze out as much battery life as possible while running Vista. The finger is being pointed at Vista’s new theme, Aero, as being the main cause – especially when running with all of the fancy effects – despite Microsoft saying that Aero doesn’t impact on performance.

Even Microsoft bloggers are starting to admit that Aero does drain the battery, but as far as I know Microsoft haven’t formally admitted to the problem yet.

One user decided to fix the problem himself, so he’s created a small utility which disables Aero while running on batteries. Simple but effective.