Core Duo and USB 2.0 Battery Problem

A while ago, Tom's Hardware did a preview of the Core Duo processor and found that the battery life was not much better than a similarly equipped Pentium M based system. Upon further investigation by Tom's Hardware and TG Daily, they detected an issue whereby the hardware was causing excessive battery drain when a USB 2.0 device was attached to the notebook.

After much discussion between Intel, Microsoft, TG Daily and Tom's Hardware, the problem was determined to be a Microsoft driver in Windows XP SP2 and the new Intel chipset for the Core Duo preventing the USB ports from going into a sleep state to conserve on power. At this point there is no fix although Intel is requesting Microsoft issue a hotfix for the operating system.

• Microsoft driver bug saps Core Duo power