Even with extra hardware support, I'd like to know the details of exactly what OS X is doing that Windows doesn't.
"Supports extra hardware" sounds suspiciously like the "unoptimised 3rd party drivers" excuse that Microsoft used to throw around.
I find it very difficult to believe that supporting extra hardware somehow costs Windows 50% of the battery life of a Macbook Air, but somehow doesn't have the same costs in terms of application performance.
>extra hardware somehow costs Windows 50% of the battery life of a Macbook Air
See mjg59's reply and my note on USB suspend elsewhere in the thread. (OS X turns off lot of things using non standard firmware implementation and uses out of band notifications that Windows and Linux aren't made aware of. Apple's Boot Camp drivers also turn off USB suspend on Windows. Those things matter a lot for power management.)
"Supports extra hardware" sounds suspiciously like the "unoptimised 3rd party drivers" excuse that Microsoft used to throw around.
I find it very difficult to believe that supporting extra hardware somehow costs Windows 50% of the battery life of a Macbook Air, but somehow doesn't have the same costs in terms of application performance.