M icrosoft says that extensive testing and conversations with OEMs indicate that Windows 7 is handling notebook batteries exactly as intended - despite user claims that upgrades to the new OS have caused significant degradation to battery life. As we reported in late January, various laptop owners - including a string of posters to Microsoft's TechNet forum - have said that after upgrading their laptops to Windows 7, they have seen a decrease in battery life. [1]

The software maker initially thought that there might be a problem with the firmware in some PC models causing an error message to appear where one was not warranted. [3]

Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, has posted a lengthy response on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. "At this time we have no reason to believe there is any issue related to Windows 7 in this context," Sinofsky writes. 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. [2]