You may wanna think twice before buying a Vista-equipped laptop next year. Chances are if you connect to a hotspot from your notebook while running Vista, your notebook's battery is gonna die faster than usual. The reason? Rather than leave the default power setting for 802.11 wireless adapters in "power save" mode, Microsoft switched it to a more "power intensive" mode for Windows Vista. They did this cause...

some wireless access points aren't configured to take advantage of Vista's Wi-Fi power saving mode, so to avoid potential problems with users connecting to a hotspot, they kept the default setting at high. Before you think it's the end of the world, Microsoft also said users would be able to adjust the power setting on their own. Good, cause the last thing we need is shorter battery life on our notebooks. – Louis Ramirez

Wireless Access Could Cause Laptop Battery Drain in Windows Vista [via LaptopLogic]

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