Lies, Damn Lies, and Battery-Life Statistics

theodp writes "What if automakers measured gas mileage by rolling their cars downhill with their engines idling? They might, Newsweek's Daniel Lyons suggests, if they took inspiration from the MobileMark 2007 notebook battery-life benchmark test, the creation of a consortium called BAPCo, whose members are — surprise — computer makers and other tech companies. Laptops score big numbers, Lyons explains, because they're tested with screens dimmed to 20%-30% of full brightness, Wi-Fi turned off, and the main processor chip running at 7.5% of capacity. Professional reviewers see company-generated battery-life claims as a joke. 'The rule of thumb is that in real-world use you get about 50 percent of rated battery life,' says a Gizmodo associate editor. Leading the call for reform is the not-necessarily-altruistic AMD, who gripes that MM07 was created in Intel's labs and rigged so Intel chips would outscore AMD chips, which draw more power when idle."

Comments

Re:Apple Don't

[AliasMarlowe]

And on the 3-year-old Dell Dimension M610 which afflicts me at work, the thing cannot even complete booting Windows XP on its original battery. Mind you, it has to load a lot of corporate dross during startup, but it still seems crappy that it cannot even boot on battery power after 3 years of mostly running on AC in its docking station. A replacement laptop has been ordered, thankfully (with two batteries, of course).