Microsoft blames Windows 7 battery problems on problem laptop batteries

Reports about laptop battery problems with Windows 7 upgrades have been circulating since last summer, when a number of netbook users posted complaints about decreased battery life with the free RC edition on various forums.

The situation seems to have come to a head over the last few weeks with further tetchy posts to Microsoft’s TechNet forums about Windows 7 apparently falsely reporting that laptop batteries needed replacing, which eventually prompted Microsoft to look into the issue.

Microsoft announced its findings yesterday and the upshot is that Windows 7 is right and Windows 7 users are wrong — in short, users’ laptop batteries are about to conk out, which is why battery life is suffering.

In a post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog, Windows and Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky says:

To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement.

Sinofsky goes on to explain how all laptop batteries degrade over time and that Windows 7 exploits features found in new laptops to report battery state more accurately than previously possible in Windows. In other words, the batteries were on the way out before Windows 7 was available and the new operating system is simply making that previously secret information public.

Sinofsky also presents a number of ‘data points’ based on anonymous usage statistics from Windows 7 users and these do seem to confirm his take on the situation. So, is this simply a case of too much knowledge being a dangerous thing, or is there a conspiracy afoot..?

[ Engineering Windows 7]