Sometimes the blogosphere really messes things up. Last week, reports were everywhere that Windows 7 was improperly gauging laptops' remaining battery life and even--gasp!--causing batteries to fail prematurely.

Bad press like that is just the kind of thing that makes CIOs stop and say, "Well, hell, I'm not about to deploy a thousand new Windows 7 laptops!"

The thing is, there's nothing wrong with Windows 7. In fact, it's doing what it's supposed to do thanks to a new feature: inform laptop users that their batteries are worn out.

You see, the OS can determine when a battery has outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced. XP and Vista didn't do that, so it's little surprise that Windows 7 users were, well, surprised by the message. Hence all the Chicken Little-style hand-wringing throughout the blogosphere.

Of course, as any IT manager knows, laptop batteries start to lose some capacity as early as 12 months into their lifespans. Load Windows 7 on a system that's 2-3 years old and you can bet battery life won't be great--and the new "replace your battery" message may ensue.

You can read more about the controversy -- including Microsoft's response -- at PC World's Business Center.

All this ado about nothing begs the question: Was this a knee-jerk overreaction to an unconfirmed problem? Have users fallen into the habit of blaming Microsoft whenever anything goes wrong with their PCs? Discuss.

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