Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update Improves Battery Life on 'Hackintosh' Netbooks?

Wired summarizes some surprising experiences of users who have hacked their MSI Wind netbooks to run Mac OS X. These so called "hackintoshes" when updated to Mac OS X 10.5.7 have experienced dramatic boosts in battery effeciency.

Reports from the MSI Wind forums are claiming a boost up to 33%, from 3 hr 45 min to a shade over five hours, using a six-cell 4400 mAh battery.

The writer, Dalton63841, has tested this to make sure its not just over-optimistic reporting by the OS. Another poster is also seeing a boost from three and a half to four and a half hours.

The reports suggest that Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.7 contain added optimizations for Intel's Atom processor and associated hardware. This, of course, is prompting speculation that support for such configurations may hint at new Apple notebooks based on similar netbook designs.

Apple has been rumored to be working on a netbook with a possible release this year.