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Google Uses Surface Books To Show Off Chrome Battery Improvements (windowscentral.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the speeding-ticket dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Windows Central: Google has posted a new video showing how much it has improved battery life while using Chrome on Windows. It demonstrated those changes in a video that featured the web browser on Microsoft's Surface Book notebooks. The video test was based on running a Vimeo video on Chrome 46, which was released in 2015, and the same video running on Chrome 53, which was released last week. The Surface Book with Chrome 46 ran out of battery power after 8 hours and 27 minutes, while the same notebook running Chrome 53 shut down in 10 hours and 39 minutes, or over 2 hours later. Chrome 53 also features Material Design, a user interface that "makes more liberal use of grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows." You can force the update to Chrome 53 by navigating to the about section of Chrome.

3 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Dumbest rivalry ever by LichtSpektren · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft sounded incredibly daft when they bragged about how the one thing about Edge that doesn't suck is its low battery usage. Then of course their monopolistic tendencies came out (again) when they decided to show a warning message to Windows 10 users who opened Firefox or Chrome by telling them that those browsers will use all your battery life and you'd better use Edge if you knew what was good for you.

    So this whole "browser battery life" war is nothing but an excuse for Microsoft's "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus won't run" tactic. This should be responded to with antitrust investigations and legal fines.

    Instead Google is playing along and trying to show how great Chrome is on Windows 10's battery life. This is a losing war, Google. You're fighting a winter war against Russia here. Nobody uses Edge because they legitimately are concerned about their laptop battery life.

    1. Re:Dumbest rivalry ever by cjjjer · · Score: 2

      If Microsoft really cared about Windows 10's battery life...

      Actually they do, by calling out Google they forced them (Google) to fix the problem.

      I guess your peer driven hatred towards all things Microsoft and your fanboi lust for Google makes you pretty blind somtimes. It's ok most people probably ignore your dribble anyway...

      Enjoy watching the Apple Event today...

    2. Re:Dumbest rivalry ever by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 2

      Then of course their monopolistic tendencies came out (again) when they decided to show a warning message to Windows 10 users who opened Firefox or Chrome by telling them that those browsers will use all your battery life and you'd better use Edge if you knew what was good for you.

      Suggesting your own product is not a monopolistic practice. How different is that from going to Google and being presented with Google works better with Chrome and a Yes, get Chrome now button?

      So this whole "browser battery life" war is nothing but an excuse for Microsoft's "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus won't run" tactic. This should be responded to with antitrust investigations and legal fines.

      That's just ridiculous! What law did they break by claiming that their browser was better for battery life? How does that justify being fined? And how is promoting your product anything like the old Lotus myth?

      Nobody uses Edge because they legitimately are concerned about their laptop battery life.

      I think that statement can be simplified to just "Nobody uses Edge". But I for one consider my battery life when choosing what software to run. My computer has to last all day. It's useless to me if the battery dies. So, for example, my browser has to have an ad-blocker because I get sick of hearing my notebook's fan whir up to 100% when going to some sites with obnoxious advertising. It's galling to know that my CPU jumps to high usage just because someone wants to sell me something. I also use a lightweight programs instead of hard drive thrashing suites.

      So if it wasn't an absolutely appalling browser, I would use Edge if it made a substantial difference to my notebook's usable life.