If [your favorite OS] is Linux, the fact that doing so roughly halves your battery life (or, more precisely, nearly doubles the idle power draw) is certainly a factor — it's a lot of why I'm not running Linux on my (4,2 — 2011 13") Air. I have no data as to how battery life fares under Windows of any version.
EDIT: For clarification on power consumption, the best idle draw I've seen anyone get in my moderately extensive research into running Linux on this machine is 7W; under OSX, it's fairly easy to get down to 4W.
Windows battery life tends to be really good because the manufacturer/vendor has put a lot of effort into optimizing the drivers. Which is also the only reason Linux has more power draw.
But Windows is a terrible environment for developing almost anything other than Windows-only stuff like .NET and PowerShell
EDIT: For clarification on power consumption, the best idle draw I've seen anyone get in my moderately extensive research into running Linux on this machine is 7W; under OSX, it's fairly easy to get down to 4W.