Microsoft Boasts of Tiny Energy Saving With IE

judgecorp writes "Microsoft has sponsored research that indicates that its Internet Explorer browser uses less power than the competition, Firefox and Google (there's no explanation of what causes the difference). However, the difference in power use is not really significant — it's about one Watt when browsing. Browsing for 20 hours at this rate, the IE user would save enough power to make a cup of tea, compared with Firefox and Chrome users. That Microsoft commissioned and published the report seems to indicate a certain desperation to Microsoft's IE marketing efforts."

Comments

It adds up

[Joce640k]

...a certain desperation to Microsoft's IE marketing efforts

Not at all. If you run a company with 10,000 PCs then it's a significant saving.

Re:It adds up

[crutchy]

What company is stupid enough to pay for 10,000 Windows licences?

Re:It adds up

[aglider]

Yes, only if all of them are just browsing the internet all the time.
But if they are making real work, maybe the results would not be that good.

Re:It adds up

[Joce640k]

Well..certainly not one that would allow their employees to have two extra cups of tea per week.

Re:It adds up

[ameen.ross]

I fail to see how using IE over the other major browsers yields a net saving. Power usage is only one factor. And it still remains to be seen how objective this sponsored study really is, as MS doesn't have the best track record in that regard.

Re:It adds up

[wvmarle]

The difference is about 5% in power use of the computers only. Which may translate to 1% or less overall savings.

However IE is also slower in rendering pages, causing productivity loss (a few seconds a page of employee time eaten up) which easily costs more than the energy cost saved.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe their core business apps are delivered through a browser.

Re:It adds up

[Joce640k]

I fail to see how using IE over the other major browsers yields a net saving...

...so therefore it can't be true?

Must be nice to be omniscient.

Re:It adds up

[jimshatt]

And besides that, you'd really need to calculate energy cost per rendered page. I might be able to make a browser that uses half the energy competing browsers use, but renders 2.5 times slower. But yeah, productivity loss is probably even more significant.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks. A few seconds? Seriously, I've seen people waste more time looking for a stapler.

Re:It adds up

[LordThyGod]

Yes, only if all of them are just browsing the internet all the time. But if they are making real work, maybe the results would not be that good.

You have to consider the source here too ... its Microsoft. It was "sponsored" research, which translates to "rigged" test with rigged results. So it is indeed done for marketing purposes, or why else do it. Probably a simple web page with little css or js. You can't take anything they say at face value.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. And same company would have to pay additional admins to troubleshoot security problems.

Also, same company probably would have higher losses in performance of employees who use mentioned browser.
Doesn't look like your argument holds the ground.

Re:It adds up

[wvmarle]

Rendering is only part of the energy use.

YouTube is at the top of the power-hungry pages, which is of course caused by the flash plugin playing video. Other pages will have moving ads, that also continue to use energy. Rendering will likely cause a power spike when loading a page, however thinking of dynamic pages like /. discussion, where you can show and hide pieces of the page, rendering is more continuous. So the time spent reading, commenting, the amount of extra comments opened: it all adds to power use.

They must have come up wiht some "typical use case" and then replicate that over the various sites they tested. And it is of course telling that barebones site Craigslist is the most energy efficient.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't bother to click on the link to the article and watch the pictures.

There's a nice graph showing the power draw vs browser for a number of common websites (from YouTube to Craigslist).

Re:It adds up

[tripleevenfall]

All of them

Re:It adds up

[tripleevenfall]

I fail to see how using IE over the other major browsers yields a net saving. Power usage is only one factor.

That is the biggest factor that makes this dumb.

So you save a little electricity - how much are you losing elsewhere in lost productivity, insecurity, virus infestations, etc, because you are using IE?

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

And no mention of test conditions... with the actual report containing niceties like this:

In addition, at the request of Microsoft we set the JavaScript timer frequency to “conserve power” in
the Windows power options. We found, however, that the default Javascript time frequency for all
computers tested was set to “maximum performance.” We did not investigate the impact of this setting
upon browser power draw.

Re:It adds up

[DeathToBill]

No it's bloody not. Honestly people have some weird ideas about arithmetic. If your average PC uses 100W then the difference in browser power usage, 1W, is 1% of that usage. It doesn't somehow magically become 50% if you're running 10,000 PCs - it's still 1%.

But, for the same of argument, let's do the math. A company with 10,000 PCs each consuming 100W during work hours is using 1,950 MWhr (100W * 37.5 hours per week * 52 weeks per year * 10000 PCs / 1000000 W per MW = 1950) per year to power those PCs. Retail electricity is around 12.86 p/kWhr, so they're spending £250k (1950 kWhr * 12.86 p/kWhr * 1000 kW per MW / 100 p per £) on electricity to power their PCs.

A company with 10,000 PCs presumably has 10,000 employees to use those PCs. Suppose they all earn the minimum wage full time, costing £12,000 each (£6.19 per hour x 37.5 hours per week * 52 weeks = £12,070.50 per year - call it £12k). Those 10,000 employees cost the company £120 million per year.

So our company with 10,000 PCs is spending £250k on electricity and £120m on wages. But wait! All those savings will add up! Suppose those users spend every working hour browsing the web. That means they would each save 1950 Whr per year (37.5 hours per week * 52 weeks per year * 1W). Retail electricity is 12.86 p/kWhr, so each employee saves a whacking great... um... 25p per year (1950 Whr * 12.86 p/kWhr / 1000 W per kW). Yes, all those savings add up to £2,500 across the whole company. That's 0.0021% of your combined staff and electricity costs.

Now suppose you live in the real world and not all your employees work in front of a PC all the time and they only spend about 75% of their time browsing the web when they do and some of them, God forbid, take a holiday every now and then. How much do those savings add up to? Sweet. Bugger. All.

Re:It adds up

[crutchy]

such as....?

Re:It adds up

[crutchy]

then they would use linux and save real money

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

1 W * 10,000 PCs = 10 KW * capacity factor. For the sake of the argument, let's pick a fairly high value: 25%. This comes to 2.5 KW. Retail costs are about $0.10/KWh right now, so this would come to a savings of $2,190/yr. For a company that has 10,000 PCs, this is nothing. The cost of paying 10,000 employees would be around half a billion dollars. The time it would cost the IT department to switch browsers, train users, and get everybody configured would exceed the cost saved by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude. Only an idiot manager would use this 1 W "cost savings" to require the users to switch to IE. Thus, it is likely going to happen in many, many places.

Re:It adds up

[crutchy]

how much are you losing elsewhere in lost productivity, insecurity, virus infestations, etc, because you are using IE

IT support contractors are doing quite nicely

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, insert any fortune 500 company here

Re: It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS

I wa thinking the same thing. I watch an Architect in my office wastes so much time with IE misery I finally introduced him to Chrome. He was blown away at actually being able to browse th winter net with Chrome! LOL. ignorance is bliss for IE fanbois.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't turn your nose up at £2,500! That could get you another ivory back-scratcher.

Re:It adds up

[1s44c]

You have to consider the source here too ... its Microsoft. It was "sponsored" research, which translates to "rigged" test with rigged results. So it is indeed done for marketing purposes, or why else do it. Probably a simple web page with little css or js. You can't take anything they say at face value.

I don't think they go as far as rigging the research. What I think they do is pay for thousands of very specific research topics and publish the ones that show them favorably and bury all the others.

If this is the best they could come up with they really are losing the browser war.

Re:It adds up

[crutchy]

ok... so name a fortune 500 company that has 10,000 windows licenses?

Re:It adds up

[Mitchell314]

Apple?

Re:It adds up

[1s44c]

I do notice Firefox uses a lot of CPU time on recent versions, even when it's displaying nothing but static pages.

If Mozilla take this seriously and save a few CPU cycles here and there some good might come out of this research.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Or an executive a £250,000 bonus for saving power!

Re:It adds up

[crutchy]

lol... no i think he meant google

Re:It adds up

[1s44c]

Bollocks. A few seconds? Seriously, I've seen people waste more time looking for a stapler.

That's true but I look for a stabler at most once a week and I use a browser more or less constantly.

And the people I work with keep moving the dam stapler!

Re:It adds up

[Joce640k]

You forget ActiveX!

The fiends at Microsoft are one step ahead of you!!

Re:It adds up

[crutchy]

does this mean you're narrowing the list of possibilities from "thousands of companies" to a mere 500? i feel like i've been ripped off

Re:It adds up

[AmiMoJo]

I guess you haven't tried IE10. It may be shit for a number of reasons but page rendering speed is comparable to other browsers, certainly not seconds longer.

A 1W saving is pretty good actually. Small Ultrabook type laptops usually only have 30-40Wh batteries so over an 8 hour run-time it could be 1/4 the machine's power budget.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

i guess Dell probably has 10,000 unsold windows 8 licenses in a warehouse somewhere

Re:It adds up

[olivier69]

Yes, but *time* adds up too ! I'd like to see the *total* consumption needed to run the benchmarks or render the pages. If IE is slower, not a surprise it consumes less instantaneous power. But in this case it would consume the power for a longer time.

Re:It adds up

[bpsbr_ernie]

Banks...

Re:It adds up

[olivier69]

In other terms, which browser is the most power efficient ?

Re:It adds up

[aglider]

How much ActiveX can you see out there? I see much more Javascript and HTML5 ...

Re:It adds up

[wvmarle]

I haven't used IE in ages, as there is no Linux version so can't even try it.

TFA however lists benchmarks as well, without further explanation, but based on the numbers I make up that IE is a bit slower than the others.

And the 1W saving is on a 15W base power draw for laptops, or 2W saving on a 38W desktop. That's just over 5% power saving - which is rather surprising to me, and in itself is asking for further investigation. Your low-power netbook won't have a 1w saving, more likely about 5% of however much power it normally uses.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find the original paper with actual methodology and data linked in TFA, and yes, for low-power netbooks saving is more like 0.2W - and it's not consistently in IE's favor.

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

ok... so name a fortune 500 company that has 10,000 windows licenses?

Apple?

WOW. Just WOW :P

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

ok... so name a fortune 500 company that has 10,000 windows licenses?

All of them

[citation needed]

Re:It adds up

[realityimpaired]

Dell, HP, IBM, and BCE are all windows shops, or at least were when I worked for them, and all of them have *well* over 10,000 employees. I still work for BCE. We've got 65,000 employees in Canada, and they're all on Windows. (well, some of the field repair technicians are being switched to Android, but that's still *well* over 10,000 Windows licenses).

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

1998 is calling: they want their ActiveX back!

Re:It adds up

[ameen.ross]

I never said that it can't be true. I'm just saying that this study of itself can in no way be used to support a claim that using IE saves you money. Simply because this study only measured a tiny subset of the total cost of ownership of a software package.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Years ago, after the major Chinese hacking incident, Google all but banned Windows. Windows can only be used with an agreement from the Corp Security group, and that is rarely granted.

Re: It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at Verizon. Every desktop in a company with 200,000 employees.

Re: It adds up

[Lawrence_Bird]

NOT THIS

The last couple of versions of IE have been far better than anything in the past and just as "safe" as firefox or chrome. I really only stay with firefox because of a handful of extensions and better ability to customize the layout. Not because of performance or security.

As to the power savings, sure take it with a grain of salt. But even taking it at face value and saying a savings of 1 watt per week per user we are talking on the order of a gigawatt per week. That is nothing to sneeze at if true. Of course, it is just a marketing ploy as 6 months from now the tables will be turned and Chrome or Opera may be in the "savings" lead.

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

I fail to see how using IE over the other major browsers yields a net saving. Power usage is only one factor.

how much are you losing elsewhere in lost productivity, insecurity, virus infestations, etc, because you are using IE

IT support contractors are doing quite nicely

They don't user power! Oh, wait: it's not possible...

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

And the people I work with keep moving the dam stapler!

It's a common problem here!

Re: It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

do all of those 200,000 employees use a computer with a windows license? do 10,000 of those employees use a computer with a windows license?

i think there's an extremely good chance that there are probably 10,000+ linux kernels operating within verizon (including embedded), but windows workstations... not so much

if you work at verizon, tell me what verizon does with 10,000 windows pcs

Re:It adds up

[Joce640k]

How much ActiveX can you see out there? I see much more Javascript and HTML5 ...

It's the "out there" part of your answer that worries me.

The OP clearly said "core business apps", ie. internal stuff.

Re:It adds up

[Joce640k]

Did you know that people are still using COBOL?

(And for the same reasons...)

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

I haven't used IE in ages, as there is no Linux version so can't even try it.

Its my case too (and, I think, of various people here)

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

And same company would have to pay additional admins to troubleshoot security problems.

And magic ones, that don't consume power to work! :P

Re: It adds up

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

um, run a company...

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

65,000 employees using Windows... within one company... so BCE may be one company stupid enough to buy 10,000 windows licenses.

Oh hang on you said in Canada... that explains everything :)

Re:It adds up

[fbobraga]

Unfortunately, yes... "legacy" stinks :P * the power savings applies to IE6?

Re: It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a company - finance sector - that has, last I heard, just shy of 70,000 employees around the world.

Every single person in this company is issued a Lenovo or an HP laptop, running XP (if it's an older laptop that hasn't been caught in the upgrade cycle yet) or Windows 7 (anything issued since last year, plus some early adopters who opted to upgrade their older laptops).

IE8 and Firefox 20-ish (forget the version number offhand) are our twin corporate standards for web browsers.

We ALSO have thousands and thousands of production servers running Linux, Windows and even a handful of Solaris and AIX boxes still. And we have a small percentage of our developers who have Macs, to support mobile app development.

There are many more machines than there are people, but every single person has a Windows desktop - it's the corporate desktop standard.

How do I know this? I was involved in the Windows 7 upgrade, and got to look at the platform breakdowns.

Re:It adds up

[nucrash]

Except for the idiotic times where Internet Explorer sends me to the wrong location. Or takes too much time to load an applet. Or Crashes for some inexplicable reason where the other browsers seem to just work fine. Your savings only mean something when you have productivity to go along with it. What good is a green car if it spends 5% of the time having to get towed from place to place?

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

How much money do you actually save buying a PC without a Windows license vs with a Windows license? Not to mention when a company calls up Dell and asks for 10,000 computers they get a pretty nice discount.

Re:It adds up

[Jason Levine]

So if a company with 10,000 Windows computers has their 10,000 employees browse the web for 8 hours using IE instead of FireFox or Chrome then they'll save enough power for 4,000 cups of tea.

Or, since the article gives the figure of 1 watt saved per hour, 10,000 IE users browsing for 8 hours will save 80 kilowatts. Not a very big savings. You could replace a few incandescent light-bulbs with compact fluorescent or LED bulbs and save more energy.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

You really love trolling, eh? Well, either that or you don't live in the real world... (see, other people can troll too).

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

My, how times change. In my day, 1998 wanted to get rid of ActiveX.

Re:It adds up

[LifesABeach]

Point of order, IBM uses CentOS, for new developement at its Rochester site, and New York site. Dell, and HP consider window licences as Inventory, not Capitol Assets. I don't know about BCE, but to purchase that many licenses, and not have a corporate license? BCE's CFO should be fired for cause, and the RMP's might want to take a look at how this person made its income.

Re: It adds up

[LifesABeach]

Is it called, "AC, Inc?"

Re: It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess -- I.E. is the only browser which respects that timer setting?

Re:It adds up

[Penguinisto]

So get a red stapler - easier to see.

(better yet, steal one.)

Re: It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

So, tell us, how does it feel to be so stupid you can't tell the difference between a watt and a watt-hour?

Re: It adds up

[Grishnakh]

How does it feel to be a pedantic asshole, AC?

He should have said 80 kilowatt-hours, but his point is still correct: you can get more energy savings by installing one LED bulb per every five employees or so.

Re: It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Applets? Seriously?

Re:It adds up

[someSnarkyBastard]

BOFH, is that you?

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't exactly true. If you had a company that could afford to purchase 10,000 PCs then the amount of money saved due to reduced power usage by using IE would still be insignificant to the company. Mostly because while 10,000 PCs is more than 1, the amount of liquid funds the company has is equally more than the amount 1 person would have.

Though that wouldn't stop accountants from trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of them. :)

Re: It adds up

[Redmancometh]

Nailed it.

Re:It adds up

[sjames]

$9/day. For a company big enough to have 10,000 desktop PCs. They probably spend more than that on restroom soap.

Re:It adds up

[TemporalBeing]

Dell, HP, IBM, and BCE are all windows shops, or at least were when I worked for them, and all of them have *well* over 10,000 employees. I still work for BCE. We've got 65,000 employees in Canada, and they're all on Windows. (well, some of the field repair technicians are being switched to Android, but that's still *well* over 10,000 Windows licenses).

FYI - HP and IBM at least have looked at replacing desktops with Linux. IBM has even gone to the extent of doing it with a sizeable chunk of their work force, probably to show governments it can be done. So just because they're a big employer doesn't mean that everyone there uses Windows, or that those that are not are a statistical blip.

Re: It adds up

[TemporalBeing]

Let me guess -- I.E. is the only browser which respects that timer setting?

Given that it would be a setting for the Microsoft JavaScript Engine that only IE uses, you're right.

Re:It adds up

[Tough Love]

Don't shoot the messenger. We always appreciate it when Microsoft submits a bug report like this. Next step is to fix Firefox to use significantly less CPU than Microsoft's product. It's hard to see anything wrong with that.

Re:It adds up

[g0bshiTe]

Yes now lets do a comparison of how much Windows consumes per hour while idle and see if that miniscule savings while browsing is worth it.

Re:It adds up

[jones_supa]

Frankly I wouldn't find it surprising at all if most fortune 500 companies had 10,000 Windows licenses.

Re:It adds up

[jones_supa]

How much money do you actually save buying a PC without a Windows license vs with a Windows license?

As a Joe Sixpack, you save about €40.

Not to mention when a company calls up Dell and asks for 10,000 computers they get a pretty nice discount.

Yup.

Re:It adds up

[jrumney]

which translates to "rigged" test with rigged results.

It wouldn't be hard either. A few well placed webm videos ought to push the other browsers' CPU usage up while leaving IE sitting at idle.

Re:It adds up

[Eivind]

Not really. Sure, if you multiply a tiny number for 10,000 then you get a higher number. But every other number rises for that company too, so the savings stay tiny relative to the rest of the budget.

1 watt saved times 10000 is 10 KW saved for every hour those computers are used for browsing. If an average corporate computer is used for browsing 10 hours a week, then you're talking a saving of $150 - $250/year, depending on how much AC they use and what power-prices they pay.

$250 on the budget of a 10.000 employee firm is no more noticeable than $0.25 in the budget of a 10 employee firm -- it's still a saving of $0.025/year pro employee. In practice, this is down in the noise.

Re:It adds up

[Eivind]

Not "probably" -- definitely.

A *one* watt saving is at $0.15 Kwh a saving of $0.00015/hour while surfing. If an average surfing employee costs $30/hour then we're talking a 0.005% reduction in cost for that employee -- if the employee surfs for 1000 hours/year, then that's a win if the employee, over those 1000 hours, waste no more than 3 minutes.

Re:It adds up

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most companies are smart enough to do so.

Re:It adds up

[lsatenstein]

...a certain desperation to Microsoft's IE marketing efforts

Not at all. If you run a company with 10,000 PCs then it's a significant saving.

Where I work, we hardly have time for web browsing. We support applications, do development, and keep the systems running with good performance. We are for the time being, a diehard W7 user. Doubt we will go to 8.x anywhere in the next 10 years.
Since I am also a linux user, my comments are that for large enterprises, W7, Office 2010, Sharepoint, Outlook, Lync, and some other software is just what the doctor ordered. Linux is great for smaller offices, but not when there are 8000 users

Re:It adds up

[arglebargle_xiv]

Not at all. If you run a company with 10,000 PCs then it's a significant saving.

It's even more significant than that, there are between 1B and 1 1/2B Windows PC in the world. A single hour at that rate saves a gigawatt of power. The headline is highly misleading, it's like claiming "Pentagon boasts lowest insert-new-toy-name cost ever, only $5 per citizen".

Re:It adds up

[DeathToBill]

Flattered. Well flattered.

Silly IE

[Anonymous Coward]

you can almost here those advertisers crying

Re:Silly IE

[Anonymous Coward]

ear and there!

Re:Silly IE

[crutchy]

they're just trying to create a "green" browser and latch onto the government environmental innovation funding tit

Browser energy?

[aglider]

I'd like to know how can they tell whether the energy has been ate by the browser, the scheduler, the idle process or whatever else is in a Windows OS!!!
And I bet that IE v1 (not v10) would eat much less power as it supports a tiny slice of HTML and other web related technologies.

Re:Browser energy?

[Onymous Coward]

Maybe they measured power consumption with IE running and then not, or then with a different browser. The power difference is really the result of the browser, isn't it? If it's the only thing changing?

Re:Browser energy?

[ameen.ross]

True, but GP does have a point. What if the scheduler really has some inefficiencies (IE bugs that need fixing) that only MS' devs know about? But let's not go down that rabbit hole.

Re:Browser energy?

[aglider]

In a real world system, nothing stands still and everything is in flux.
Unless you can finely account for every single CPU instruction and hardware activity to the browsing, then it's unlikely your "test with and without" will yield anything relevant.
Even if you reboot the system after every single test you won't be able to get the very same "execution environment".
And this is why I am asking: there seems to be not enough information on how the test has been conducted and measured.
To me it smells like crap. I could be wrong, but the smell is awful.

Re:Browser energy?

[Wonko the Sane]

I normally don't care about browser power usage, until I'm trying to maximise the time left on my laptop battery, and then I play close attention to CPU usage and power consumption.

On my laptop Konqueror wins by a very wide margin when it comes to being able to browse the Internet for as long as possible on a single charge. Firefox and Chrome are absolute pigs by comparison.

Re:Browser energy?

[agm]

A better comparison would be IE running on the OS that is required to run it compared to Chrome running on a different OS. keep in mind that to run the IE OS you also need a vurs checker running. I'm sure the IE/Windows/Virus checker combination would gobble more power than, say, a Linux compiled from source targetted to the hardware and running Chrome.

Re:Browser energy?

[crutchy]

To me it smells like crap. I could be wrong, but the smell is awful.

will you stop shitting in your pants... seriously dude... you'll only be away from your pyewta for a couple of minutes

Re:Browser energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what world are you living that you get to pick your company's hardware and software based upon browser electrical usage? Running IE vs running another browser should be the only things that change on the test system. Changing anything else means you are no longer testing the browser. If you have a virus scanner, it'll be running for all browsers.

Re:Browser energy?

[crutchy]

keep in mind that to run the IE OS you also need a vurs checker running

as much as i'm a linux fanboi with no sympathy for microsoft i have to call bs on this one

you don't need a virus scanner in windows and even if you have one it probably won't save you anyway... hardened IE security settings and disabling of plugins should be sufficient unless you're into warez and porn, and if you're dumb enough to click on links in unsolicited email you deserve a good infection

on a different note, lynx would be way more power-efficient than IE :)

Re:Browser energy?

[1s44c]

I second that. Firefox on a laptop on battery is a nightmare that is best shut down unless it is absolutely needed. I see 10% CPU usage when it's doing absolutely nothing. Come on Mozilla, stop wasting my CPU cycles!

Re:Browser energy?

[Joce640k]

I'd like to know how can they tell whether the energy has been ate by the browser, the scheduler, the idle process or whatever else is in a Windows OS!!!

If only there was an electrical device you could connect to a computer and see instantaneous power usage. That way you cold open a page in IE, look at the power. Open the same page in Firefox, look at the power, etc.

I guess we'll all have to wait at least another century for a technology as advanced as that, though.

Oh, wait: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt

Re:Browser energy?

[fbobraga]

you don't need a virus scanner in windows and even if you have one it probably won't save you anyway... hardened IE security settings and disabling of plugins should be sufficient unless you're into warez and porn, and if you're dumb enough to click on links in unsolicited email you deserve a good infection

Say that to average Joe user :-)

Re:Browser energy?

[Grishnakh]

You may believe this, and it may well be true, but good luck finding any large corporations where it's not standard IT policy for computers to run a virus scanner at all times.

The OP's point is sound: a better comparison would be to run Linux with Chromium or Firefox, versus Windows with IE and a virus scanner and all the other crap that goes with it (in a standard corporate build). Most likely, the Linux system will be more power-efficient overall.

and if you're dumb enough to click on links in unsolicited email you deserve a good infection

This is exactly why you won't find a corporate IT department that forgoes virus scanners on their employees' PCs. They have lots of employees that really are that clueless, and they can't afford a "good infection".

Re:Browser energy?

[Grishnakh]

That's not what the parent is asking at all: he's asking for an accounting of which parts of the Windows OS use power, and how much, not just the overall consumption. The implication is that other parts of the Windows OS are wasting power, compared to other OSes (namely Linux). Of course, this is all speculation; it'd be interesting if someone did do some measurements of some Linux systems (desktop and laptop, multiple ones of each, for better statistical data, and also using different Linux distros and DEs (Ubuntu/Unity, Fedora/Gnome3, OpenSUSE/KDE, Mint/MATE, Mint/Cinnamon, Mint/KDE, Mint/XFCE, etc.) running Firefox and Chromium, and compared this to the same systems running Windows (XP and 7 and 8) running IE, Firefox, and Chromium, to see how they all compared.

What about the biscuits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsing for 20 hours at this rate, the IE user would save enough power to make a cup of tea

Hell, it's not like us Brits need another excuse for a cuppa.

"Ah go on, afterall I've been very good with the electricity this week..."

Megawatts worldwide

[Camembert]

It is a small saving on one computer, but take all the computers with IE in the world and it becomes a lot of megawatts. It wouldn't be a bad idea from an ecological viewpoint if this kind of efficiency became more important.

Re:Megawatts worldwide

[gbjbaanb]

amen to that. Its not just ecological issues that benefit from efficiency - there's a reason why modern applications run about the same perceived speed as their ancient counterparts did on ancient hardware - generally its because the programming involved is now built on layers of layers of abstracted frameworks.

For example, I run a few graphics-intensive games and they work fine, then I run a couple of not-so graphically intensive games that were written using XNA and the cooling fans come on full blast. I don't think its a coincidence that the 'easy to use' abstraction of XNA leads to overall inefficient use of my gfx card (and the power required to run it) where the better libraries that require better developer skills don't.

If MS is targeting efficiency, then we should see an improvement in speed as well as saving the planet from all those millions of PCs running these things.

Re:Megawatts worldwide

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "take all computers with IE _10_", which is not that much. IE 8, on the other hand, is a fucking cycle (and by extension, watt) hogging behemoth.

Chrome and FF run on those computers just fine.

Re:Megawatts worldwide

[hobarrera]

Yeah, but doesn't running windows consume a lot more power than running OSX or GNU/Linux? Especially with all that fancy aero stuff, etc, etc.
My laptop had windows out-of-the-box. With Linux I get abotu 25% more battery duration, which basically translates to 25% energy savings. Windows+IE pushed me the wrong way.

Disable Flash

[ninjanissan]

Now what would really save some energy on many computers would be to disable Flash. Flash commercials on some sites really waste many CPU cycles (energy). On my poor old computer it is clearly visible on the CPU load :) If you are using a laptop it will also make your battery last longer as a bonus!

Re:Disable Flash

[TheP4st]

On my poor old computer it is clearly visible on the CPU load :)

I am able to hear from a significant distance when the fans struggle to keep the machine alive as my wife play candy crush on her macbook pro, nothing else that she does on it is causing the same desperate whirring of the fans.

Re:Disable Flash

[Nutria]

On my poor old computer it is clearly visible on the CPU load

Flashblock FTW!

Re:Disable Flash

[fbobraga]

It (https://addons.mozilla.org/pt-br/firefox/addon/flashblock/), and http://adblockplus.org/, keeps Firefox usable on Old computers

Re:Disable Flash

[Nutria]

Even Chromium. My daughter likes to open lots of YouTube tabs, and that (a) is really confusing, and (b) drains the battery fast without Flashblock.

Re:Disable Flash

[fbobraga]

What keeps me from using Midori in this cases is the lack of FlashBlock (ABP works very well in it - besides this, its really a nice extremely light browser!)

Re:Disable Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

While using a rather under-powered atom netbook I quickly took interest in browser performance. On a cpu that slow you really notice which applications eat cpu power. Differences that are largely irrelevant on big multicore desktop CPUs.

Out of IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera the best result came from Firefox. Not because firefox is faster or more efficent, its because I could install adblock+ and noscript. (Without those addons Firefox was as bad as the rest)

Turns out that most modern webpages load gobs and gobs and gobs of scripts from dozens of different domains. Adblock cuts out the uselss ad serving ones and browser data abusing tracking ones. Noscript lets you whitelist only the ones you need out of the rest. The difference was really jaw dropping. Performance went from barely tolerable to pleasant (Well, as pleasant as can be on a netbook with a tiny trackpad, screen, and keyboard)

I think the problem is that most web sites waste your time with useless or downright abusive js.

Re:Disable Flash

[hobarrera]

You poor old computer? My octo-core Bulldozer FX 8150 can't keep up with flash. Of course, flash uses just one core, but it should be more than enough to get decent FPS on silly flash games.

Re:Disable Flash

[bunratty]

Just run AdBlock and most animations on web pages are gone.

That is quite a bit of power!

[bickerdyke]

The energy needed to brew a cup of tea is definitly NOT small compared to the energy that is available in your cellphone battery.

Re:That is quite a bit of power!

[xaxa]

Using this (so making five cups at once):

2.2kW * 3 minutes / 5 = 0.022kWh.

1W * 20 hours = 0.020kWh (the extra energy used by Chrome).

However, I think the whole thing's rubbish -- I don't constantly load websites, I load them once (which takes a few seconds -- or longer if it's IE), then spend time reading the page.

Re:That is quite a bit of power!

[bickerdyke]

Ok... so just assume that a typical cellphone battery has a capacity of 2000mAh and a voltage of 5V, then the power stored in it would be something around 0.01 kWh

So you would need the energy of TWO whole cellphone batteries to make a cup of tea.

The difference would be that browsing 20 hours with IE means that you have to go two charching cycles less within those 20 hours than with another browser.

Now we only would need to compare this to a typical number of recharching cycles for 20 hours nonstop-browsing.

But still, it's meaningless if it's only visible on dasktop machines and/or they don't know why IE uses less energy.

Re: That is quite a bit of power!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok... so just assume that a typical cellphone battery has a capacity of 2000mAh and a voltage of 5V

Why in blazes would we assume that when everyone with a brain in his head knows that mobile batteries are Li-ions (single cell or multiple cells in parallel), with a MAXIMUM voltage (fully charged) of 4.1V to 4.35V and an average voltage over the whole discharge (which is what you're after) of 3.6V to 3.8V?

As I'm English

[maroberts]

I'm just going to have a cup of tea whilst I read this...

Re:As I'm English

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to google how to make a cup of tea and watch 5 videos on youtube about it. Then make a cup of tea using a fully filled kettle that I've reboiled 3 times.

Desperation?

[DeathToBill]

Yes, though maybe not corporate desperation. More like some idiot in marketing commissioned some idiot study then desperately had to have something to show for the money.

Shame about teh malware consumption...

[telchine]

Unfortunately every Toolbar that gets installed by accident adds another two watts, and every bitcoin mining piece of Malware that IE lets in adds 100W

Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Barryke]

No matter how silly the original article is, this /. article is even lamer.

Browsing for 20 hours at this rate, the IE user would save enough power to make a cup of tea,

Heating thee? Thats a really bad comparison!

Or .. a good one if you realize how inefficient heating with electricity is, especially relatively to other useful household things such as anything with batteries, your DVR, the lighting, a tablet, or even a laptop.
On my 35W laptop this means 3% power savings.

(my dupe comment on a dupe submission: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3846941&cid=43962015 )

This article seems to wind down on the marketing effort. Whats news in that? I rather like this fact exposing instead of the shockshell courtroom cases.

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually heating with electricity is 100% efficient, if you don't take into account the production and transport of the electricity to your home. Of course those very same production and transport losses will also happen for the electricity you use to drive your computer (and if it's a laptop on battery power, you'll have to add the losses from the battery charging cycle to that), and are certainly not included in that 1W savings figure.

BTW, I'd expect the power requirement of the browser to be strongly dependent on the processor. Especially I strongly doubt that IE on the processor of your 35W laptop will save you 1W, even if your surfing behaviour happens to match exactly the test scenario.

And BTW, the meaningful number would not be the absolute wattage, but the relative one. If IE consumes 0.1W where FF consumes 1.1, that's a significant difference. If IE consumes 1000W where FF consumes 1001W, the difference is negligible. And yes, the first pair of numbers is ridiculously low, while the second pair is ridiculously high, but that's intentional, to make the point more clearly.

Finally, I'd bet FF with AdBlock and NoScript consumes less energy than IE without those.

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[telchine]

Heating thee? Thats a really bad comparison!

It was RIGHT THERE in the summary! In fact, you QUOTED that part of the summary! It's a three letter word and you STILL screwed it up THAT badly?

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in his language tea is spelled thee and since it sounds pretty much the same he accidentally typed the word from his native language? Have a bit of tolerance for people communicating in other languages. Then again maybe it was auto-correct's fault...

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Making tea isn't 100% efficient. The kettle doesn't magically remain at room temperature while heating the water to boiling point. Unfortunately, their calculation does seem to assume 100% efficiency or very small cups of tea, because 20Wh is enough to heat 215g of water by 80C (i.e. from room temperature to boiling).

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what tea cups you are used to, but I'd say that is quite a big tea cup.

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that water boils at 80C where he lives it places him somewhere 3/4 up Everest.

Need a lot of hot tea to keep warm there.

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Barryke]

tea / thee
As AC contemplated its my bad: the spelling in Dutch is different but pronunciation is identical.
I could get away with claiming its a sagacious pun though.. but i'm not sure anymore myself! ;)

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Barryke]

Good points you have AC, you win the internet today.

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "by 80 [degrees] C", not to.

Re:Theehee thats a bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh.

Doesn't matter - I now have this picture in my mind of Olympians sipping (electrically boiled) tea from great big mugs and it's certainly cooler that way.

On the other hand...

[gishzida]

Microsoft failed to mention the amount of power wasted cleaning up malware infections brought about because IE is not able to block malware 'mouse over' attacks. "Ad Block Plus" and "No Script" kill crapware attacks before they happen... unfortunately IE is part of the problem rather than the solution.

Re:On the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried IE 10? Seriously, actually given it a go? Or are you just speaking out of zealotry rather than experience? FF has made some anti-customisation (and thus anti-user) changes lately that are really pissing me off. I think they've gotten a bit big-headed, or they're terrified of Chrome, either way, MS has been working really hard improving their browser and perhaps they do feel justified in feeling unfairly judged and perhaps they can feel desperate - they've put in a tonne of work and everybody keeps dumping on them - without actually giving them a fair go.

Re:On the other hand...

[Nutria]

FF has made some anti-customisation (and thus anti-user) changes lately that are really pissing me off.

I haven't noticed any. What kind of changes?

Re:On the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried IE 10? Seriously, actually given it a go? Or are you just speaking out of zealotry rather than experience?

I'd assume he's speaking from experience with the previous 9 versions of IE. That's not zealotry. That's learning a lesson. Maybe this is this time Microsoft finally got it right, but seriously. We've all heard that line many times before.

they've put in a tonne of work and everybody keeps dumping on them - without actually giving them a fair go.

Oh cry me a fucking river. These are the same assholes who can't compete in a fair marketplace. Remember they were convicted for what they did in the browser market. Try reading the judges opinion some day and you'll see these people are scum.

Re:On the other hand...

[gishzida]

When a user cannot compensate for bad design of a tool 'out of the box' it is time to get a different tool.

IE in all of its generations has been designed to hook into the OS first rather than protect the OS and the user first.

  IE has never been designed to actually block scripted behavior because MS has always believed that scripting behavior in all its forms is a "feature not a bug" and the plug-in architecture of IE [so far as I am aware] does not allow for the use of plug-ins like "no script" and "Ad Block Plus" therefore IE is always going to be a less secure tool than others which do.

Yes both Chrome and Firefox both are doing things that are frustrating [the number of crashes per day in FF is up!] ... BUT the important thing is every time I've had to clean up a problem on a client machine it is because the user was using IE exclusively. I have not used IE on my own machines [7 at last count] in atleast 6 years and have not had a malware infection via the browser on any of them during that period.

While I appreciate Microsoft's willingness to give me work to do in a lean economy, I'd rather it be in a less time and energy wasting manner... I hate telling people they are idiots because they trusted something they should not have. IE is an untrustworthy browser by design. Think if it this way: Would you hook your plumbing or electrical directly to the Internet without proper safeguards and disregarding standards? Would you let your car's manufacturer design the car in such a way that it will only allow you to use one brand of gasoline or oil or other after-market device or service? Would you use a browser tool that is always collecting data on you and your usage behavior and reporting it to the software vendor?

This all boils down to trusting Microsoft. Are you feeling lucky?

Do you *really* want to trust a chair throwing monkey boy who wants to sell you some poorly designed crapware so an old bastid like me can come in and fix it?

The day MS releases IE with a plug-in architecture that allows script blocking plug-ins and other security plug-ins designed to kill XSS, bad script behavior, and mouse over attacks will be the day I tell my clients it is safe to use...

Re:On the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Adblock also saves power by preventing flash ads, ads with sound, ads with animation, unnecessary data downloads, malware, etc.

OS comparison

[TheP4st]

I wonder if initially it were meant to be a OS comparison but the outcome were not the one wished for so they had to settle for a browser comparison.

terminal server

[jamesh]

I use firefox on my laptop almost exclusively (I don't drink tea), but on terminal servers i'd much prefer users ran IE than firefox. Memory is cheap but lots of memory is expensive, and the stats of IE vs FF on a terminal server shows IE using hardly any resources while firefox consumes much more memory and cpu.

of course firefox is better so i'd expect it to use more power to better express it's awesomeness...

No method?

[zaax]

As with any experiment If there is no explanation of how they got to the results the experiment was worthless

Re:No method?

[wonkey_monkey]

As with many Slashdot stories linking to news reports of scientific experiments, you may need to travel a whole two clicks away:

we installed three popular browsers, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox, on six new notebook and four desktop computers running Windows 8. We then measured the average power draw over one-second intervals for a six-minute period with each of the individual browsers open, for each of the ten most-visited websites in the U.S. In addition, we also measured power draw for both the Flash® and HTML5 versions of an online video, as well as the Fishbowl HTML5 benchmark.

Re:No method?

[realityimpaired]

Windows 8... That answers everything. Remember a year ago, when the browser creators were complaining, because Windows 8 wouldn't let them run their renderer natively, so they had to either take a CPU hit to run interpreted code, or use the Trident rendering engine?

I'd like to see the same test done on Windows 7...

Re:No method?

[jakimfett]

This is exceptionally insightful, and I wish I had mod points. I wonder why nobody further up the comment stack has noticed this?

Re:No method?

[Tallfeather]

The restriction is for Windows RT, so isn't relevant to the discussion about Windows 8.

Re:No method?

[jakimfett]

Source/citation?

And during those 20 hours...

[Anonymous Coward]

... he's spending some 100 times that by keeping the computer and monitor on, plus using the internet infrastructure.
There was a calculation some years ago, that on google search alone would use up the equivalent of heating a cup of tea (i.e. 20 Wh).

So turning off the search engine's auto completion is probably better than switching browsers.

Only part of the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Websites and flash do faaaar worse at wasting power !

1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[bemymonkey]

As I type this in Firefox, Lenovo's Power Manager is showing power usage of about 6W. 1W less would be a 17% decrease! With the 9-cell battery currently attached, that's a 2h20m jump in battery life.

Of course, I've already dropped FIrefox's power consumption significantly using Adblock, Noscript and so on, so it's unlikely I'll see a full Watt of improvement by switching to IE, but for others, this could be huge.

Re:1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[Anonymous Coward]

But how does it scale? Saving 0.7W-1.0W on a 37.8W as in the article might well translate as low as 0.0185W-0.026W, giving you an extra 3 minutes if you're lucky. That's also assuming that it IE doesn't draw more power in total - unfortunately the source cited in TFA wasn't available when I tried so the only numbers available are the "averages" with no explanation of what they're averaging over (if it's average during page load, for example, and IE takes twice as long to load then IE uses more power overall).

Re:1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was a 1W decrease on your Lenovo.

By reading TFA you can find the link to original report and see that 1W is _average_ over different laptops. Seems like on newer ones they saw the difference of +-0.2W in favor of different browsers for different websites and ~1W is for older laptops with baseline draw of ~25W.

Re:1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, the chart seems pretty clear: Average power consumption over a set period of time displaying the web page (either including or not including the power spike during the page load - at those figures, I'm assuming it includes the spike unless the laptop is running dedicated graphics).

The PDF seems to confirm this (see 2.2.2) - 6 minute test for each page, including the load spike.

Re:1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[bemymonkey]

This is correct, of course... however: I've already decreased the average power usage of my system with idling Firefox from about 8W to 6W (no Flash, Noscript, GIFs set not to animate, Profile and Firefox itself entirely on RAMDisk to minimize disk access etc.). I'd assume optimizing the browser directly would be much more effective, so getting half of the power savings I'm able to reach with a few simple (albeit drastic) tweaks is entirely within the realm of reality, IMHO.

Re:1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[Anonymous Coward]

you (any many people in this thread) are assuming it is telling the truth, and that they have not played funny games with statistics and unrelated effects.

Re:1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[fbobraga]

Of course, I've already dropped FIrefox's power consumption significantly using Adblock, Noscript and so on

I think IE don't beat that...

Re:1 Watt is HUGE on mobile!

[bemymonkey]

You may be right about that, but even then, someone who runs a bog standard Firefox or Chrome would see a benefit in battery life by switching to IE.

Not that I'm advocating switching to IE, of course... just saying Firefox and Chrome need to start focusing more on reducing power consumption.

Hard to believe

[countach]

I would have thought the fastest browser was the most efficient, thereby making the fastest browser also the most efficient in power. That makes this study very hard to believe.

Re:Hard to believe

[thegarbz]

I believe it. Firefox, Chrome, etc are all independent programs. IE however is part of the OS. Microsoft has been telling us that for years. :-)

Re:Hard to believe

[wonkey_monkey]

I would have thought the fastest browser was the most efficient

Why? You wouldn't assume the same of cars, would you?*

*knowing my luck this will probably turn out to be obviously true

Test procedures

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's look at the test procedure in the actual report...

Measure the true root-mean squared (rms) current, power, and voltage for each UUT over a six (6)-
minute period at 1Hz (averaging over 1s period) for the following test conditions:
a) Baseline: No browsers or other windows open
i) First perform a preliminary measurement of power draw in this mode for the UUT, to
ensure that the lowest suitable current range has been selected on the power meter to
maximize measurement accuracy
(1) Record the current range selected for testing the UUT
(2) Record at least 6 minutes of ‘Baseline’ UUT operation with no browsers.
(3) Move the mouse/trackpad once a minute to prevent the unit from going idle
b) Static Website Test: Three different browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla
Firefox) will be used. Each browser will be tested for the Top 10 U.S. websites as of March 25,
2013 (listed below, from Alexa 2013). The UUT will then be rebooted after all ten websites have
been tested. In all cases, the browser will have two ‘background tabs’ open to
cse.fraunhofer.org and cfvsolar.com, both static landing pages.
i) Each browser will be directed to the following websites, with all cookies accepted. Data
logging will begin immediately when changing the target website to capture transitional
power draw.
(1) Google.com
(2) Yahoo.com
(3) Live.com
(4) Youtube.com
(5) Facebook.com
(6) Wikipedia.org
(7) Ebay.com
(8) Amazon.com
(9) Craigslist.org
(10)Bing.com
ii) Record all power, current, and voltage measurements in a database. Each test will take
place for at least 6 minutes.
iii) Move the mouse/trackpad once a minute to prevent the unit from going idle

Notice the "at least 6 minutes" part...
So if we change sites every 6 minutes with one browser and every 30 minutes with another, that's still perfectly valid.

And then this gem:

In addition, at the request of Microsoft we set the JavaScript timer frequency to “conserve power” in
the Windows power options. We found, however, that the default Javascript time frequency for all
computers tested was set to “maximum performance.” We did not investigate the impact of this setting
upon browser power draw.

Re:Test procedures

[Thornburg]

Please mod parent up.

Who wants to be that the Windows Power option for JavaScript timer frequency only affects IE, and not other browsers on the machine?

Microsoft opens up about Prism...

[ArsenneLupin]

Now that the cat is out of the bag anyways, Microsoft simplified their DNS :

> dig login.live.com
[...]
;; ANSWER SECTION:
login.live.com. 0 IN CNAME login.live.com.nsatc.net.

==> so login.live.com is just a shorter name for NSA Tracking Center?

Can read in another way...

[plankrwf]

In true /. tradition, I did not read the article. So perhaps the article contradicts me, but just bases upon the summery I could give an alternative explanation:
It could have been that the following two things are true:
1. IE is terrible in use. It is that horrible to work with that an average person browsing the web for 20 hours with IE reads only half the pages compared to an average person using Chrome or Firefox.
2. IE is terrible in powermanagement. Within that 20 hour period, it will use almost the same amount of energy to load and display the pages as Chrome and Firefox use to load and display double that number of pages. Compared to - say - Firefox this is partly true because the average Firefox user reads less ads (through extensions such as add-blockers) and hence less information had to be downloaded, and less flashy ads have to be shown.

Re:Can read in another way...

[wonkey_monkey]

In true /. tradition, I did not read the article. So perhaps the article contradicts me

Spoiler alert: it does.

No energy saving ...yet

[ColdCat]

The paper is clear there is no conclusion from those tests. And as the tests were paid by Microsoft If there was something really significant in favour of IE we will read it everywhere.

Due to the very limited number of test conditions, we cannot draw robust conclusions about differences in power draw among browsers running Flash® and HTML5. We recommend conducting additional testing of a larger set of Flash® and HTML5 websites to draw more robust conclusions about how these technologies impact computer power draw.

It's good to start some energy efficiency ranking. Windows 8 (all tests are on that platform) have some very nice feature to helps developer on power consumption. My guesses is that no-one is using them as you need Win8 specific code but if somebody like microsoft try to MAYBE we could see some real differences.

Re:No energy saving ...yet

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition, at the request of Microsoft we set the JavaScript timer frequency to “conserve power” in
the Windows power options. We found, however, that the default Javascript time frequency for all
computers tested was set to “maximum performance.” We did not investigate the impact of this setting
upon browser power draw.

Why does this sound like "we ran the same tests with default options first, MS didn't quite like the outcome"?

banners

[Anonymous Coward]

the banners in IE will drawn the 1 W

Re:Returning to IE

[Anonymous Coward]

So you read a questionable, unverified and non peer-reviewed study sponsored by Microsoft that claims IE consumes less power than Firefox, and suddenly Firefox has jumped the shark. Hmm, ok. So, I take it, if Mozilla were to call a press conference tomorrow and say that IE is responsible for the extinction of Unicorns in Elbonia, you'd also feel Microsoft were evil mofos?

Seems like Microsoft's FUD really is working.

Re:Returning to IE

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This is pretty sad astroturfing.

Bing less power efficient

[sturle]

The first thing i noticed: Browsers use more power on Bing than on Google and even Facebook. All browsers. Don't use Bing on portable equipment. (Like if anyone ever did)

My power saving tips:
- Adblock (does IE even have Adblock?)
- No flash. Just remove it.
- Ghostery (in Opera to kill unwanted javascript) or NoScript (Firefox).

Oops

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Microsoft based their power savings on people accidentally starting IE right before turning off their monitors for the evening.

Makes sense,,,

[MitchDev]

Slower things need less energy...

Study conducted using Windows 8

[Bearhouse]

But you have to check the PDF to find that...
http://preview.tinyurl.com/kyp6ypz

Selected quote: "The variation between websites and the technology they use seems to be far more significant, with YouTube clearly burning up to 3W more power than other popular sites such as Google. And more complex media experiences, delivered by sites using Flash or HTML5, appear to burn even more energy, with heavy HTML5 and Flash sites causing an increase in power draw of up to 8W or 9W (effectively adding 50 percent to the machine’s power draw)"

So maybe IE can make more power-efficient use of Win8 when playing YouTube videos? Not really a surprise...
Put noscript, adblock etc. into Ffox and save! (Also on bandwidth..)

Would have been nice to have seen Fraunhofer (who conducted the survey) try and retain some shred of dignity by comparing performance on other platforms.
How about Safari on PC & MAC? Chrome & F'fox on Linux also?
Maybe because IE only runs natively on Windows?

explorer.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

Was the test fair? i.e. did they kill explorer.exe when testing the other browser(s)? oh wait...

WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know WHY they can say this?

ALL WINDOWS COMPUTERS ARE RUNNING 'IE'. ALL OF THEM.

It's the main process IN windows. it IS ie. explorer.

Call it whatever you want. The shell. The UI. It's ie.

That's why it was always stupid they tried to make microsoft 'unbundle' ie... It's not really a seperate package.

Coffee?

[m.alessandrini]

Sorry, I'm not english, can you convert to milli-coffee units?

I run browser on other operating system

[stasike]

OK. I could save one watt by running IE instead of [insert your favorite browser here]. But then I would have to run it on Windows, and install anti-mallware, anti-virus and other anti-CPU measures.
I think I am much better off running a less efficient browser on Linux, even with a memory hog called KDE 4 running the whole show.

Less Power? Easy

[kramulous]

Use a dark colour as a background instead of white when drawing pixels.

Re:Less Power? Easy

[m.alessandrini]

Don't know, I always felt it's an urban legend, especially with LCDs.

Re:Less Power? Easy

[kramulous]

I've never understood this line of logic that seems to happen with computing. It's not that hard. Hook up a power meter and see for yourself.

Stop guessing and start knowing.

Re:Less Power? Easy

[m.alessandrini]

Hook up a power meter and see for yourself.

Have you did it? And so where are your numbers to prove your claims? Anyway I don't feel like getting blind to read on a black background. There's a reason if we write black over white.

Re:Less Power? Easy

[kramulous]

Yes, I have done it. On my 46" LED Samsung TV (late 2010 model?), a majority black screen draws 22W while a white screen will draw 58W.

Regarding your black on white comment, I spend about 10 hours a day, 6 days a week for the last 15 years looking at gedit with an 'oblivion' font&color setting. I find it quite pleasing to look at (particularly when staring at i's, j's and k's in loops) compared to black on white, which I can sometimes lose focus, line, on.

Just sayin'. That's all.

damning with faint praise

[stenvar]

It's like damning with faint praise, only they are doing it to themselves.

My MSIE install uses 0 watts

[erroneus]

I'm guessing you know why that is.

Battery power

[jibjibjib]

On a laptop or tablet, one watt is a lot of power to waste. But of course it looks small when you compare it to an irrelevant but very energy-intensive task and add some anti-Microsoft flamebait.

Re:Battery power

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to read this lame-o study, but, like others, will comment anyway. It seems to be the /. way.

The 1 watt "savings" has got to be the saving relative to a specific setup. I can't believe that you can get 1W savings on a 100W desktop system, and also get 1W on a laptop that may be consuming 25W on average. Seriously, c'mon. If that were the case, it *would* be significant at some point.

Re:Battery power

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really wanted to save power (and bandwidth!) on your laptop, you'd simply install ad, flash, and script blockers. Especially ad.

Apple are doing this as well

[icb1000]

One of the exciting new features of Safari in Mac OS X announced at the WWDC keynote yesterday was the power savings when web browsing as compared to Chrome & FireFox.

Power savings in terms of real-world power consumption isnt the relevant factor here, rather it is the impact in laptop battery life that power savings can have

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[crutchy]

if there is any clever code in IE, microsoft probably stole it from open source

and the only place where every single watt counts is on your electricity bill, and not only because it is probably one of the few places where individual watts are actually counted

Microsoft shouldn't be proud of that

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd expect a bigger difference, it's a third party vs. inhouse product, Microsoft has all the means to give IE advantages over the competition. So, no, I am not impressed by Microsoft.

Where they testing this one Windows machines

[pecosdave]

Meaning that IE was running on the test machines regardless of browser being tested, but the same wasn't true in inverse?

Hardly seems fair to me.

When IE first started getting forcefully integrated in the latter days of 95, even more so in the 98 days, one of the first things I would do is do every hack and trick I could find (usually available in handy "lite" programs) to remove IE from the background when you weren't using it. It was a major undeniable performance boost on those machines of the day. I'm guessing we're still dealing with a remnant of that.

Huge difference with OLED

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with an OLED display it makes a HUGE difference:

an OLED will consume around 40% of the power of an LCD displaying an image which is primarily black [...] it can use over three times as much power to display an image with a white background

source

Or in other words

[Hypotensive]

IE does 1% less work than other browsers.

Study: IE users 1% better looking

[Anonymous Coward]

Conclusion based on health effects of one additional cup of tea per day.
Co-sponsored by Bigelow.

Typical Slashdot Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

If this study had resulted in the opposite results everyone here would be screaming about how IE contributes to global warming.

Offset

[ewrong]

Offset against the millions of megawatt hours that have been burned by development teams wrestling with IE inconsistencies over the years I think they still have some way to go.

Page swapping

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be that Microsoft's developers found some tricks to reduce IE's page swapping (as in virtual memory pages, not HTML pages) by more careful management of heap memory usage, or perhaps reining in some of the tricks (opening dozens of TCP connections to each site) that may reduce presentation latency in a few edge cases but waste disproportional CPU cycles.

It's the same with browser speed ...

[stevez67]

... They all brag about saving a ms here and a ms there, making a big marketing deal out of a browser taking one blink or two blinks of an eye to display a page.

Even Better on Linux!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What the press release totally left out was that the power savings of running IE on Linux is 100% compared to running firefox on linux. I don't understand why MS wouldn't mention that in their own press release - I mean, how often does MS beat anybody on linux systems?

Re:Returning to IE

[Kythe]

Someday, I think it would be really cool to have some sort of inside story on how much time, effort, and money Microsoft spent posting favorable marketing stuff on message boards like /.

Microsoft publicizes results about its own product

[korbulon]

and basically says "meh."

Saving 18% is HUGE!

[elabs]

This year battery life is he #1 stat to follow. That's what everyone is boasting now. We're past the GHzs and GBs ever since Moore's law failed us. If your browser can make your battery last 18% longer then you're clearly ahead of the pack.

Hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Microsoft included all the time users have to spend fixing issues with their browser in this study.

Better to browse than do real work?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I should stop using power hogs like Visual Studio and just browse web sites?

Notebooks

[ceoyoyo]

Yeah, because a whole watt of power is completely irrelevant when you're running on a battery.

Submitter was in such a rush to bash MS he just sounded like an idiot (along with half the posters). I enjoy some good old fashioned Slashdot MS bashing, but let's make it good old fashioned MS bashing, okay?

Re:Notebooks

[VortexCortex]

Consider how much energy we would save as a species if IE never existed. I remember all the wasted time debugging and breaking my code to work with IE6. I still do have to write code that works in EVERY OTHER BROWSER without change, and then consistently does not work in IE, and requires additional effort to create. Consider that continuing to use IE means every web business wastes time making code that specifically panders to IE's broken rendering and javascript environments. I'm sorry. I remember the years of abuse. With their lack of adoption of WebGL I see only more abuse in the future. Screw IE.

App Nap for general apps

[andersh]

It wasn't just Safari either. I found it even more interesting that applications in general would be paused if "App Nap" determined they were not active/seen/playing.

Mine goes to zero

[wcrowe]

It uses zero power on my computer. I never click on it.

Bloated web pages are the real power wasters

[linebackn]

Of course, I've already dropped FIrefox's power consumption significantly using Adblock, Noscript and so on, so it's unlikely I'll see a full Watt of improvement by switching to IE, but for others, this could be huge.

And you have found the real power guzzling culprit!

Browsers wouldn't have to waste so much power if they didn't have to spend so much time processing crap rather than just displaying your content. On some web sites I have managed to vastly increase the speed and responsiveness of the sites just by blocking certain "analytics" scripts. And only the insane would browse the modern web without Adblock. Less processing time translates in to power savings, and which browser someone is using is mostly irrelevant since they all have to process the same junk.

If a large company really wanted to save power and increase productivity, they would install such blockers on clients or a central proxy. Or better yet, demand sites embed less of this crap to start with.

Energy Savings simple - Decrease IE Browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Market for IE contracts.. be it due to lack of demand, or unpopular User Interface.

The total world power consumption attributable to this product will decrease.

Ip So Facto.. IE Saves the World from Global Warming!

Confirmed here!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm that IE draws a lot less power than other browsers.
In fact, IE is so efficient, it draws absolutely no power at all in my system*!

* Debian Wheezy, YMMV

Putting it into perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

it's about one Watt when browsing. Browsing for 20 hours at this rate, the IE user would save enough power to make a cup of tea, compared with Firefox and Chrome users.

Putting that into perspective, that savings means that /. readers could power a small city if we all switched (back) to IE.

Re:Putting it into perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, with the fine print reading:
* Assuming everyone runs Windows 8 with IE 10
** With IE's JS engine switched to power conserving mode in Windows control panel ("We found, however, that the default Javascript time frequency for all
computers tested was set to âoemaximum performance.â We did not investigate the impact of this setting upon browser power draw." as the fine paper states)
*** On certain models of laptops and desktops and for certain sites
**** Assuming we browse the net all day long
***** For a really small town of ~1000 conservative families and no industry at all.

And consider what savings we could have if we'd all switch to Damn Small Linux and Lynx for browsing!

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[LifesABeach]

I see two problems here. 1, you responded to an AC; you've replied to someone that knows they're wrong. 2, who ever modded you down was most likely the AC. The AC has already demonstrated their lack of insight that they will defend to the point of self destruction.

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[Stewie241]

I somehow doubt they really did anything to save power. It seems far more likely that they had a lab setup and did measurements and found that IE used less power than the other browsers that they tested and decided to market it.

The summary does a disservice by comparing the power usage to that required to make a cup of tea. If you read the article, it says "Laptops use about 14.7 Watts when idling. Firing up a browser adds another one or two Watts to this, depending which sites are browsed, and which browser you are using, Fraunhofer found. On desktop PCs, browsers add the same amount to the energy draw – but the baseline is around 37.8W."

So what we're talking about for a laptop is a power savings of about 6-7% when idling.

Power savings in computing for things like web browsers is not about saving the world - it is about allowing you to use your device longer. If you can surf for an extra ten minutes by using IE vs. say Google Chrome then that is actually a somewhat interesting differentiator.

Pathetic.

[VortexCortex]

Ridiculous bullshit. Focus on your damn core competency MS. You know, that shit you actually suck at now?

Yes but how much power does Windows 8 use...

[skiman1979]

How much power does Windows 8 use compared to other operating systems? Perhaps you'll save enough money to make 2 cups of tea per week, but is that savings negated by running Windows 8 with both the Metro UI and the "desktop" mode with a separate version of IE in both modes? Compare that to Safari on OS X or Firefox/Chromium on Linux (gnome 3 vs fluxbox vs xmonad vs KDE...)

I mean if we're just looking at power consumption here...

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[datavirtue]

I want scientific proof that not starting IE and running Chrome is using more energy.

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[TemporalBeing]

The summary does a disservice by comparing the power usage to that required to make a cup of tea. If you read the article, it says "Laptops use about 14.7 Watts when idling. Firing up a browser adds another one or two Watts to this, depending which sites are browsed, and which browser you are using, Fraunhofer found. On desktop PCs, browsers add the same amount to the energy draw – but the baseline is around 37.8W."

The question remaining, however, is how much of that is hidden by running Windows? In other words, do the same thing with Linux (GNOME, KDE, etc) and Mac OSX. Does it really make a difference? Or is Windows merely hiding the extra usage by always having that usage included in the OS? Of course, don't expect Microsoft to fund such a study.

do less, use less

[xcix]

Maybe it's the lack of WebGL support, IE does not need to use computation power to render the pretties. Or maybe it's the lack of support for modern Web standards in general. "Choose my app! it does uses the less power! It does one single thing turns off the lights in your monitor!"

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[Stewie241]

Well, the study was about browsers and not operating systems. I sort of assumed they tested all browsers on Windows in which case that is a controlled variable.

I'm sure they would sponsor a study looking at power usage of Linux vs. Windows vs. OS X. You probably won't see the results of their work unless it is in their favour, and you probably won't see the results of their work w.r.t. desktop Linux as it doesn't have the mindshare that would make it worthwhile to waste advertising space on (few know what Linux actually is, fewer would consider using it, and fewer still would consider using it, would make a decision based on power usage, and would trust a study funded by Microsoft to base a decision on). I say all this as a Linux/OS X user.

meanwhile... on OS X

[smash]

Safari supposedly uses 30% of the power of Firefox - at least if the presentation yesterday is to be believed. Still, running 10.9 here right now and it seems pleasant enough. battery seems to be holding up...

Hilariously...

[Anonymous Coward]

They also proved that people who care about power users should use Google over Bing.

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they did at least one thing to save power:

In addition, at the request of Microsoft we set the JavaScript timer frequency to âoeconserve powerâ in
the Windows power options. We found, however, that the default Javascript time frequency for all
computers tested was set to âoemaximum performance.â We did not investigate the impact of this setting
upon browser power draw.

I guess this setting only applies to IE, and sure enough they "did not investigate".

Note also that "average" is not very useful when range of baseline draw is from 9.76 to 22.65 watt and difference in power usage from site to site and from laptop to laptop ranges from 2-3W to 0.1-0.5W

This is not about "how do I save an hour of battery life?", investigating that JS performance setting and dynamic content blocking effect on power use would tell you more -check out a dude getting his FF power usage from 8 to 6W using NoScript/AdBlock etc. down there in the comments. This is about "what numbers can we show to make IE look better?"

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[g0bshiTe]

My guess is that "power saving code" is the fact that half the time the browser doesn't work properly and 45 minutes of that hour is spent with the windows suspended in (Not Responding) mode.

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[g0bshiTe]

I agree, but how does that translate to my using IE allowing me to actually watch the last 15 minutes of that DVD while on an airplane?

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You make false assumptions about those that can't be bothered to create an account on this site. 2. ACs don't get mod points. 3. The AC that wrote that is the one that wants his tadpoles swimming in the fetid rectums of the users of this site. What say you?

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[TemporalBeing]

Well, the study was about browsers and not operating systems. I sort of assumed they tested all browsers on Windows in which case that is a controlled variable.

I'm sure they would sponsor a study looking at power usage of Linux vs. Windows vs. OS X. You probably won't see the results of their work unless it is in their favour, and you probably won't see the results of their work w.r.t. desktop Linux as it doesn't have the mindshare that would make it worthwhile to waste advertising space on (few know what Linux actually is, fewer would consider using it, and fewer still would consider using it, would make a decision based on power usage, and would trust a study funded by Microsoft to base a decision on). I say all this as a Linux/OS X user.

True, the study was about browsers on Windows. However, given that IE is integrated into Windows you need to also have a control variable for Windows too.

Energy spent already, sorry about that folks!

[Anonymous Coward]

They wasted all that energy by spending it on research. We're doomed! DOOMED! ...when we run out of oil, that is.

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[LifesABeach]

Please notice that an AC uninspireingly attempted to (communicate?) to my posting; pity.

Re:Is the power saving feature PATENTED ??

[cheater512]

Shock. You are telling me that they oversimplified a topic like computer power consumption?

Operating system comparison would provide significantly higher power usage differences.
As would the presence or absence of Flash and ad blockers.

Hell chances are there would be significant differences depending on if the laptop was switched on 30 seconds previously to an hour previously.

web dev

[thrasherm2]

... and it's only been a day since IE gave me a problem with testing a web application I'm writing. I raise my cup of tea to hating IE.