Windows 7 versus Windows XP on the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA Netbook

Battery Life

A long battery life in a netbook is very crucial. When buying a netbook, consumers want to know that it is going to get the job done without shutting off mid-surf. Windows 7 is supposed to offer battery life that would be acceptable on a netbook. This is the main reason netbook manufacturers are planning to make the switch to shipping netbooks with Windows 7 pre-installed once it is released.

As we mentioned, we did install the Intel GMA Graphics driver and the ASUS ACPI driver in order to give the best comparison possible. The monitor settings were the same at just under 50% brightness in battery saver mode. Let’s see how Windows 7 did on our battery life tests compared to Windows XP.

As you can see, Windows 7 performed very close to what Windows XP did. Windows XP only lasted 9 minutes longer than Windows 7 at idle, but both lasted over 10 hours on our ASUS Eee PC 1005HA! Our movie playback test showed a slightly larger difference of 26 minutes, but we were still satisfied with the results. Our overall impression is that we were not overly impressed with Windows 7’s battery life performance, but it did not disappoint, either.