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#10
What a lot of people reading this (and other) threads do not realize is this.
Hardware manufacturers (aka OEMs) like to customize their hardware to the point of lunacy, so that unless you're a technical savant, you're not going to be able to do much in the way of upgrading them / using better drivers as they come out. Case in point - Mobile GPUs are more often than not restricted to the drivers that they can use - you simply are not able to go out and install the latest nVidia Forceware / ATI Catalyst drivers for your system, at least not without a good bit of editing on your part.
The same will hold true for so-called SMART batteries, those that have circuitry built into them to report their conditioning to the BIOS. The idea here is that a lot of modern OEMs use such a technique to be able to easily gauge the battery (and many other hardware components as well) even if the installed OS is completely unbootable - as long as you can get to the battery, you can perform hardware diagnostics to test your hardware, like RAM, HD, and yes, battery.
For instance - I worked on several of one particular client's machines, and one of them was an older Compaq Armada laptop - whose battery did not work at all. The OS had been upgraded more than once from the default OEM installed OS, and some of the integration factors were missing - including the battery indicator and status messages, and as a result, I was told that the battery simply did not work. I went digging into the BIOS and found that Compaq included a battery conditioning application within the BIOS - and used that to resurrect what was supposedly a dead battery. Now, there is no way for the OS to have known about this, b/c back in the day, this particular feature was never ported over to the OS in question - XP - as the laptop was designed for 9x, and was running 2000 when I got it, and was running XP when the client got it back. (Yes, a legitimate copy, TYVM - I don't deal in piracy, so ixnay those thoughts). Anyhoo, after conditioning the battery, I was able to get it to last to just about what the original specs said it should last - almost 4 hours - on a laptop and battery that were almost 5 years old.
Now, a newer case - my own personal HP 2710p Tablet PC - which was bought in Aug 2008, and came with Vista business. I ran all of the Betas and the RC of Windows 7 on it, and at first there were no official drivers for such things like the Trusted Platform Module built into the laptop, nor were there some other key critical / important drivers, so I had to revert to using Vista drivers. I noticed that there was a drop in battery life (meaning I did not get my usual 3:45:00 from the battery anymore, more like 3:15:00), but I also realized that there were not official Windows 7 drivers for my machine from HP. As of November, a lot of drivers have been updated, but still not everything - not everything that was originally installed that utilizes the TPM (although if I dig deep I can find most of it now) and certainly nothing to do with the battery.
However, I also realize that that is my fault - I was using an OS not specifically approved for the machine yet. Furthermore, I was using drivers that were made for a previous OS - and although most of them will work in a pinch, they are still for a previous OS - meaning not certified for this OS. Now that 95% of the drivers are out for the machine for Windows 7, I am taking some time out soon to performing a clean install of 7 on the Tablet to make sure that no holdovers are from Vista and its idiotic inconceivable yet intrinsic incompatibilities with 7, and I'll use only HP approved drivers from HPs website.
Why? Because it is simple - M$ didn't make my hardware. HP did. For me, at this stage, t even consider a class-action lawsuit without having any facts in my hand, other than seeing numerous reports on the web about this happening, is ludicrous. No OS can operate without the OEM supplying hardware device drivers - and if they are not supplying the correct thing / supplying the incorrect ones (such as drivers written to Vista specifications as opposed to 7 specifications) then you can bet your bottom dollar that the egg will be on their faces, not on M$s.
So, before you go of half-cocked about a class action lawsuit, you better be damned sure you have your ducks in a row - and also be sure that you're not quoting just another poster with little to no experience in these matters than the rest of us.
Now, this thread can remain open, but only for objective complaints and stats - as in what manufacturer your hardware is, specific battery information (if possible) and what apps (if any) are in the BIOS for testing / conditioning your battery. Added to that would be whether you cleanly installed 7 on your machine, if it came pre-installed, or if you upgraded from Vista / XP (and if you used an upgrade disc but performed a custom install formatting the drive, that is a clean install - not an upgrade).
Finally - although it is possible that the OS is, in fact, destructively writing to the battery EEPROMs in a way that it farks them up, I guarantee that if it can be written to once, unless the EEPROM is actually hosed, it can be written to again - and again, your OEM should be handling that as they are the ones supplying you with the hardware, not M$. Therefore, look for solutions soon from your OS developer or else from your OEMs (and I am betting on your OEMs).
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