I still think the entire premise of this thread was intentional trolling. Ok, my laptop running DOS runs longer, therefore, robotics should run DOS! Windows XP is 4 generations old. LOL. Industry isn't building on ancient technology.

Jim

(LOL)

@Troy, I document everything and go way over the top. I love to see the data (call me crazy) and feel everything must be justified.

@Jim, While XP is 4 generations old it still stands up next to Windows 7 as being one of the better operating systems. I still prefer to use it for some applications and it is very stable now.

I have no doubt that an out of the box Windows XP SP3 will be a little more efficient than Windows 7 with updates and fixes but I've kinda challenged myself to make Windows 7 run for longer. Whether or not I can is a different story but I'm damn sure going to try After all, ARC is recommended to run on Windows 7.

Either I did a very good job of optimising Windows 7 for ARC or ARC only reduces the battery life by 10 minutes (this didn't include any video processing from the EZ-kit camera), either way I am impressed with the results.

ARC loaded up and Battery Eater ready to monitor the ACPI for battery charge levels (ignore the time, I didn't bother to set the correct time zone, I am 8 hours ahead of that time).

The first of the real tests, ARC optimised Windows 7 running ARC while connected to a single EZ-B board via bluetooth.

Total time: 7:17:56 (438 minutes)

As a side note, I know the PC had never run Windows XP for over 14 hours without a recharge, come to think of it I don't think it ever lasted 7 hours... But the XP results (next test, possibly tomorrow) will shed a lot of light on it all.

I guess my point is there's not much point to this thread. While I'm glad rich threw up enough data to quiet the troll, I think the troll egged on enough to just get a rise out of people. Bottom line is, industry isn't building new products on xp no matter how efficient it is. And for a personal robot, one would be wise to use what they already have, be it xp or 7 or 8. And you'd be even wiser to meet minimum system spec. Lol.

Jim

Im enjoying the tests and data. These are things that are very valuable. Do you mind making a video and typing a list of steps to optimize win 7 to make this substantial impact? I believe the tests and directions for optimization us excellent EZ Robot Wiki material.

I agree with GIJIM alot and using the same.

There is a lot of point in knowing the differences between battery life (amongst other issues) of each supported operating system. Many netbooks come with a linux os pre-installed, obviously this is no good for ARC so the user would have to make a decision on which operating system to install.

Or, is having fully supported ARC software worth any loss in battery life or would an MP3 board be a better option (voice synthases issue in XP from what I've read).

Not to mention all of those systems already running Windows 7 and scratching their heads as to why they only get an hours worth of use from a 5Ah battery.

Each of us will have a different reason for choosing what we choose, some may not even have a choice, but the information is becoming available to allow everyone to make up their own minds. This isn't for anyone to say "you must use blaa blaa blaa" it is to give everyone the opportunity to see a clear picture.

@Josh, I will do at least a list of the optimisations I have carried out, if not a full on tutorial (I'm even toying with the idea of building a set of custom ARC optimised Windows 7 ISOs).

The PC I'm using for these tests is being a little bit awkward and not letting me downgrade to XP from the desktop and with my media being on a USB stick it makes it a little more awkward to boot install, so it's not moved forward for a while, but it's still coming

I too would like to see the steps done on how to optimize Windows 7 for ARC and Windows XP for that matter. Anything that can make our batteries last a little while longer can only be, as Martha Stewart says, "thats a good thing", LOL.

Long Live ARC !