Microsoft has kicked off an investigation into reports of various notebook battery “issues” plaguing a number of Windows 7 users.
According to Tony Bradley of PC World, the problems seem “sporadic,” but fairly widespread.
“It is unclear whether affected systems are simply misreporting the battery life, or if the battery capacity is actually being permanently affected,” wrote Bradley.
“[But] long before Windows 7 was released for general availability in October of 2009, users were reporting suspicious behavior with battery life, or at least reported battery life, when running the Windows 7 RC (release candidate) version.”
Bradley explained that Windows 7 may not be reporting the remaining battery life correctly, or prematurely warning that the battery is nearly expired.
“There are users who have reported switching operating systems back to Windows Vista, or even a non-Windows operating system, and still experiencing drastically reduced battery life.”
Indeed, ZDNets’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes notes that some users claim Windows 7 is negatively affecting overall battery life and performance.
“Some are going as far as to say that their machines are virtually unusable when powered by the battery,” stated Kingsley-Hughes.
“If all that wasn’t bad enough, some users are going as far as to suggest that the problem is in fact physically damaging the battery because reverting to a different OS doesn’t restore the battery to its previous state.”
