Indeed Windows Vista is too noisy, like a girl can’t let you rest on silence. The hard drive “click” is heard from time to time even nobody touching it.
Worst, with Aero and this little hard disk activity from time to time, Vista has make a notebook with extended battery pack fail to outlast Windows XP with normal battery.
Technically speaking, if you want the Dual core notebook to last 6 hours with the heavy extended battery pack, stick to Windows XP. If you insist to use Vista, shutdown Aero interface will give you ~4 hours battery time (yes, with the extended battery pack).