When I talk to customers, I get lots of questions about overall performance in Windows Vista—especially in the area of laptop battery life. I saw an idea called Make longer lasting batteries for better portability from IdeaStorm user winoffice on the topic. While Vista brings a number of improvements to the table like enhanced security and graphics, it's a new and sophisticated code stack. We've been working with Microsoft to address some of the factors that impact overall notebook battery life.
Microsoft enabled a new set of power management tools that allow Dell to fine tune the operating system to the hardware. This is a great example of the unsung improvements Microsoft has made to the OS which will become more apparent over time.
In November, Dell took advantage of these tools to make almost 40 configuration changes and updates. Some enhancements were straightforward, like making more intelligent use of hibernation sleep states, while others were more complex, like optimizing multi-core power management.
If you are looking for optimal Windows Vista performance on a new system; consider a Dell. A good example is the Inspiron 1525 and you can read more about its strong battery performance in this recent review in Laptop Magazine.
PS. If you are running Windows Vista on your Dell today and would like to utilize our optimizations, we'll post them to support.dell.com (and we'll update this post) in the coming weeks.