One of the improvements you can expect to see in the latest OS release by both Microsoft and Apple is a noticeable increase in battery life. By some estimates, Windows 7 will boost battery life by 11% and Apple’s Snow Leopard by 10%. These are accomplished through, among other things, more efficient handling of idle CPU time and better management of wireless radios.

Even if these numbers are off by a few percentage points, I would consider anything around 8% to be noticeable as you are getting an ‘extra’ 5 minutes on each hour. Of course battery life estimates are highly subjective because they depend on what the user is running, but for the most part many users will (hopefully) realize this difference.

Just something to keep in mind if you are in the market for a laptop or you already have one capable of running the new OS releases.