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

[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

[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.