Funny, I have almost a dozen Android devices that give me over 12 hours, and a Windows 7 device that gives me 16.
Now, I'll admit the 16-hour device is not what I would traditionally call "portable" - it is a Lenovo X230 with the extended battery *AND* the underslung attachment battery - but it's a decent compromise when I was shopping for a netbook replacement. (Especially as I can choose to leave behind the underslung battery if I only need 8 hours and that cuts the weight in half.)
The Android devices do the thing, are perfectly secure, powerful, fast and basically do everything I could ever ask of them...except have a decent office package. (Unless I'm using Office 365 through Dolphin, which I usually do.)
Windows 8 isn't a consideration. It's complete, utter shit. Windows 9 might be decent, but I seriously doubt it. Microsoft's corporate attitude in general - but especially that of the endpoint divisions - are so utterly user hostile that I think it's safe to bet that the next several years' worth of endpoints are going to be worse, not better.
Desperation and repeated failure breeds fanatics. Fanatics aren't capable of rational thought. They collapse into an echo chamber where anyone who doesn't think like them is not merely wrong, they are evil. Their voices and opinions mustn't be heard.
This is where the Microsoft endpoint divisions find themselves.
They have dug themselves a deep hole and sealed themselves in. Outside thought, opinion, reason...it is viewed by them as hostile and treated as such. Increasingly, the few remaining fanboys are falling into the same category. I would liken them to an early-2000s Apple Mac mythology, but that would frankly be unfair to the Cupertinians; Microsoft and the banner-wrapping fandom that remain clucking after their endpoint products are way farther gone than the Macolytes of the past.
Microsoft doesn't do portable. When Microsoft can reach 12 hours of sustained usage that doesn't require outright lying about usage patterns or power metrics the rest of the world will be at 24. Microsoft has no desire or care to solve these problems. They don't feel it's relevant.
X hours - defined as roughly however long the existing technology lasts - is "good enough for anyone." In fact "what on the table today" is "good enough for anyone" which is part of the problem; so indoctrinated into this message are the very people making this technology that they have become unable to see where improvements are possible, let alone needed!
Microsoft have done many great things. Some parts of Microsoft will continue to do great things into the future...but the endpoint guys are a complete write off.
Changing the guard with Ballmer II: The Elop Boogaloo isn't going to change anything. Elop's eyes are as calloused as the rest.
Maybe - maybe - if they choose Satya Nadella as the new CEO they stand a hope in hell on the endpoint. That's a great big bloody maybe and it doesn't seem like powers that be are even capable of that level of rationality. Sad, really.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
