Responding to a number of recent articles claiming that Vista's new "Aero" user interface causes laptops running the new operating system to drain their battery faster, Microsoft has published its own results. The company says Aero consumes only 1% to 4% more battery life than when the feature is disabled.
Vista is designed to turn off transparency effects when put into a power-saving profile, but Microsoft product manager Nick White says, "We don't turn off Aero wholesale because in the end, doing so is not going to save you much more power." White notes that a laptop display is the big culprit, consuming between 15% and 25% of the battery, while the graphics processor (GPU) uses only a small percent, even when being pushed to its limits with Aero.