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IE8 Beats Other Browsers In Laptop Battery Life

Posted by timothy on from the not-without-windows-it-doesn't dept.

WARM3CH writes "AnandTech tested a laptop with an AMD CPU, a laptop with an Intel CPU, and a netbook to compare battery life while running Internet Explorer 8, Opera 10, Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Chrome. They tested on simple web pages and flash-infested ones. IE8 had the best battery life on both laptops (followed by FF + AdBlock), and Safari had the worst battery life. On the netbook, Chrome was slightly ahead of IE8. The report concludes: 'Overall, Internet Explorer and Firefox + AdBlock consistently place near the top, with Chrome following closely behind. Opera 10 Beta 3 didn't do as well as Opera 9.6.4, and in a couple quick tests, it doesn't appear that the final release of Opera 10 changes the situation at all. Opera in general — version 9 or 10 — looks like it doesn't do as well as the other major browsers. Safari is at the back, by a large margin, on all three test notebooks. We suspect that Safari 4 does better under OS X, however, so the poor Windows result probably won't matter to most Safari users.'"

28 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. So in theory by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IE8 + adblock would give even better results!

    Seriously though, how can you browse the web *without* adblock? I've shoulder surfed people doing it, and I'd rather eat my own hand.

    1. Re:So in theory by GF678 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Seriously though, how can you browse the web *without* adblock? I've shoulder surfed people doing it, and I'd rather eat my own hand.

      You can't have a problem when you don't know any better.

    2. Re:So in theory by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I really wouldn't switch to IE 8 for this, or many other reasons that it might supposedly be better. It's 7 minutes longer than FF with adblock, or 4% longer. Not nearly enough difference to justify using a program that doesn't work the way that I like, not to mention one that presents such a major target for malware.

    3. Re:So in theory by Swizec · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously though, how can you browse the web *without* adblock? I've shoulder surfed people doing it, and I'd rather eat my own hand.

      You can't have a problem when you don't know any better.

      It's also not a problem if you simply don't browse anywhere there's too many ads. See ads you don't like? Just close the fucking website, it's a worthless piece of shit anyway if it puts ads first and content later.

    4. Re:So in theory by sgant · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have to agree. I'm on a Macbook Pro now and using Snow Leopard with it's 64-bit Safari. Everyone is saying how fast and quick Safari is...along with Chrome, but the simple fact is both of these browsers don't have Adblock so they're actually SLOWER than Firefox with Adblock because they all have to load in those ads.

      Maybe Safari and Chrome are fast on a test....but in real world situations without adblock, they're slow.

      --

      "Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
    5. Re:So in theory by EvilIdler · · Score: 4, Informative

      If your Safari doesn't have AdBlock, install it: http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock
      (32-bit for now...source available)

      I also recommend ClickToFlash: http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

    6. Re:So in theory by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Every single one of these articles instantly devolves into a thread about AdBlock. Yes, we get it. A lot of people here like AdBlock. Can we stop fucking posting the same fucking thread in every fucking single fucking article? Christ.

      It's like Ron Paul in the politics tab during the election.

      --
      Comment of the year
    7. Re:So in theory by GF678 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just close the fucking website, it's a worthless piece of shit anyway if it puts ads first and content later.

      deviantART once had a Flash add which utilised 100% of my CPU, and since it was at the time a single-core CPU, I was barely able to bring up the Task Manager to kill it. Interestingly enough, it was that experience which pushed me to using Adblock Plus.

      Point is, deviantART is hardly a worthless piece of shit. Sometimes they just made bad choices about what ads to use. Generalizations are bad, m'kay?

    8. Re:So in theory by JohnBailey · · Score: 3, Funny

      Aren't you looking back right now?

      No.. If I was, I wouldn't be able to see the monitor.

      --
      It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
    9. Re:So in theory by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's like Ron Paul in the politics tab during the election.

      Yeah, well, if you were using Firefox, you could get the RonPaulBlock plugin... ~

  2. I for one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I for one welcome our new battery life saving overl-... wait... what?

  3. The real conclusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Flash is a pig, no matter what browser you use.

    1. Re:The real conclusion by AndreR · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But the thing is, IE processing pages with ads and flash was *more* efficient and less demanding on the CPU than Firefox processing pages with no ads at all.

      That comes to me as quite a shock, given that Flash is, in fact, a pig.

    2. Re:The real conclusion by Arterion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Kindof. It may just mean that the flash plugin for IE is less battery intensive than the flash plugin for FF.

      We'd have to no-flash, flash-only, and a mix to figure it out. The tests here didn't.

      This can't turn into a comparison of Microsoft vs Mozilla... it's probably more like a comparison of Adobe programmers on different teams.

      --
      "That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
    3. Re:The real conclusion by bhtooefr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And that is why IE8 has the best battery life - the IE version of the Flash player is hardware accelerated.

  4. No no no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Infections last longer with IE8. Read the summary if not the article. Sheesh!

  5. Yeah right by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's all about wget on single user mode.

  6. 2% difference... big deal. by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Informative

    The difference is within background noise - as are all these stupid tests.

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:2% difference... big deal. by adolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, really. It's a meaningless number.

      There's no control in this experiment (and, no, I don't mean "control group.") The fact that they were flogging away at public, and probably dynamic (read: inconsistent) websites totally invalidates the entire comparison.

      If Anand wanted to take it seriously, they should have eliminated more variables. If they'd set up a dedicated, light-weight web server running in a controlled minimalist environment (bare Slackware+Apache, perhaps?) somewhere on a dedicated LAN, that would have been be a good start. They might even have used a RAM disk to ensure consistent access times to the data being served.

      Hell: They should have even measured the battery voltage both before and after the tests, to eliminate (or at least quantify) any incongruity in the charging circuit's behavior. And they should've made sure to rotate their testing, so as to average it out as the battery ages (which it quite measurably will in these relatively-abusive full-charge - full-discharge tests).

      But they didn't do these things. And it might seem like I'm splitting hairs here, but the results are close enough that hairs must be split.

      Meanwhile, I think battery life while browsing is an interesting and very practical metric which is often overlooked these days. I applaud them for attempting and documenting such a feat, which I'm sure was relatively time-consuming, and I admonish them for doing a piss-poor job of it.

      (And, no: I don't care which browser "wins." I have most of the tested browsers installed on my own laptop, and for me, it would be instructive to know which one will conserve battery life best in times when I know I'll be without power for a long period of time.)

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    2. Re:2% difference... big deal. by vadim_t · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, seriously, who cares?

      If you get 2 hours of battery time, this gains you about 2 minutes and half.

      For 5 hours of battery time you get 6 minutes extra.

      If you really want to extend battery time, turning down the screen brightness by a notch will probably have more effect.

    3. Re:2% difference... big deal. by BikeHelmet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You should use your favourite browser, because you'll be more productive in it.

      Teach yourself to read or write 10% faster, and that'll dwarf the savings a different browser provides.

  7. Battery life test by Wowsers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So IE8 is more battery friendly? Is that before or after having to install a virus scanner to keep an eye on what IE is doing?

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
  8. I think... by speedtux · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given how far behind technically IE is otherwise, I think this is called "grasping at straws".

  9. It seems the article also tested a netbook by joeflies · · Score: 4, Informative

    The summary would lead you to believe that they only tested two laptops. However, they also tested a netbook and in this case, "chome 2" (their spelling, not mine), won. Why didn't the submitter didn't mention this test where IE8 didn't win?

  10. New IE8 Commercial by goldmaneye · · Score: 5, Funny

    4:00 AM: Intrepid counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, gun drawn, kicks open the door to a small flat in a run-down apartment building. The nefarious Evil-Doer turns to face the door, clearly shocked.

    Evil-Doer (played by Jerry Seinfeld): Agent Jack Bauer! How can this be? That laptop had three, maybe four minutes of battery life left on it, at most! How could you possibly have downloaded those files in time?!
    Jack Bauer: Simple.

    Bauer turns to face the camera, which quickly zooms in on his face.

    Jack Bauer: I used Internet Explorer 8.

    A giant explosion rocks the screen, and a huge Internet Explorer logo appears.

    Announcer: Internet Explorer 8. Because on the Internet, seconds matter.

  11. Of course it does... by cffrost · · Score: 4, Funny

    Any application that you never run saves battery life.

    --
    Thank you, Edward Snowden.

    "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
  12. Speaking as a scientist.... by DynaSoar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... those people aren't.

    "Each test was run at least twice." If they were run at least 10 or 20 times you'd be able to estimate from the variance in the scores if the differences were significant.

    The netbook had almost identical measures for all except Safari (caveat to significance, as above). Does anyone think it matters that the two laptops were running Vista and IE8, a fairly integrated collection of software, likely installed together, whereas all the others were thrown on top of an operating system that never could get the hang of running much more than itself.

    Anyone want to put odds on whether the difference in drive activity in trying to (1) run MS operating system with MS vs. non-MS software and (2) run stuff installed together vs. installed after, would be proportional to the observed differences in battery life?

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
  13. Re:Wait a second... by bhtooefr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Very simple experiment - obtain a temperature monitor that can show you CPU and GPU temperatures. (This usually needs discrete graphics, although some integrated graphics systems hide the northbridge temperature as the "PCI" temperature.) Monitor CPU load, as well.

    Start a flash video in IE. Note what happens to all temperatures - CPU load will be low, CPU temps won't change much, GPU temps will rise.

    Now, start a flash video in any other browser (that isn't IE-based.) CPU load will be (comparatively) high, and CPU temps will rise. GPU temps will stay steady, or at most climb a couple degrees just because of being heated by the CPU.