Windows 7 Battery Doubts RemainWindows 7 Battery Doubts Remain

A day after Microsoft said it could find no evidence that its Windows 7 operating system drains laptop batteries at an unusually fast rate or issues false alarms about impending failure, users continued to insist there's an issue.

"I have the battery problem everyone else has been talking about," wrote "Patel33", in a bulletin board post to a Microsoft support forum. The user said he and his wife have Toshiba laptops that are identical except for the fact that his runs Windows 7 and his wife has Vista.

"Guess what, in two weeks of use my battery is dying and the energy report shows only 15% chargeable. Wife's is completely fine," said Patel33.

"Same problem with mine," wrote forum member "Lagunexxx", who said the battery on his Asus notebook PC died "within a few days" of his installing Windows 7. Numerous other posts voiced similar problems.

The ongoing reports of Windows 7 battery issues prompted a Microsoft rep to jump into the forum on Wednesday. "For others posting to this thread with battery issues, please contact our support.microsoft.com Customer Support so that we can gather insight into the specific details of what you are seeing," wrote a support rep named Chris.

The new reports come just a day after Microsoft Windows group president Steven Sinofsky used a blog post to insist Windows 7 does not create battery problems.

"At this time we have no reason to believe there is any issue related to Windows 7 in this context," said Sinofsky, in a post Tuesday.

"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," said Sinofsky.

Sinofsky said it's normal for laptop power cells to start to lose their ability to hold a charge after about a year, and said users who are experiencing trouble should purchase a new battery.

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