Rob Bushway continues to look for reasons why many Tablet PCs have such poor battery life under Vista. He thinks he’s narrowed it down: “There is something going on here that has more to do than with Aero and Sidebar, I’m afraid.”
I don’t mind turning off Aero and the Sidebar if it makes my equipment usable. My UMPC–which is the only device that I have which runs Vista acceptably while on battery–runs neither, so maybe these are the culprits after all. I’m disabling them both right now to see if this helps my Toshiba M400. I’ll let you know how it goes.