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Microsoft Reproduces Google's Battery Life Test To Show Edge Beats Chrome (venturebeat.com)

Earlier this year, Microsoft said that its Edge browser was more power efficient than Google's Chrome, a claim that Google refuted with its own findings. But the debate isn't over. An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is at it again -- touting Edge as the most battery-efficient browser on Windows 10. The company has rerun its battery tests from the previous quarter using the latest versions of the major browsers, open-sourced its lab test on GitHub, and published the full methodology. But this time, Microsoft says it also replicated one of Google's tests to show that Edge lasts longer than Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

8 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sure by neoritter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or instead of resorting to logical fallacies you could look at the published information to determine if they are right. You know, by reading the released methodology and looking at the published lab test code.

  2. Well, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hum... so the browser with the most limited set of features requires less power... go figure..

  3. Pointless by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Battery life isn't the be all and end all browser test. For me - on mutliple systems - Edge just stalls and stops randomly at the most annoying times - even if I've only got 2 or 3 tabs open. Chrome pretty much never does this.

    What good is extra battery life if I spend 20-50% more time in the browser waiting on it to do something?

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  4. The Microsoft Problem Is Never Performance by alternative_right · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft products generally perform well under the hood. The problem is the other stuff. The interface shows the signs of design by committee, and applications are configured in such a way as to manipulate us into using other Microsoft products and services. That is what we hate, because both of these interrupt the process of work, and replace it with the process of working-around-Microsoft.

  5. Re:Who cares? by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Battery life is at best a distant second in my books on browser performance. Edge just isn't very good. I've tried a couple of times to use it, but it's like some really awkward late alpha early beta project. It's also easily broken, which is why we basically abandoned in at my office.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  6. Don't care, won't use it by nine-times · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I honestly don't care what Microsoft can show regarding Edge. I'm not going to use it.

    First, because Chrome has a track record of complying with standards. Microsoft IE does not. Chrome has become the de facto standard at this point. Most developers that I've talked to in the past couple of years have prioritized testing on Chrome. If you want your website to work, use Chrome. (there's some nice irony here) Second, when they had the dominant browser, it was a disaster. I'm not looking to return to those days. In fact, Microsoft has shown a patter of screwing their partners and their customers, and I have no interest in providing them with any more influence or power than I'm forced to. Also, Chrome has a community of developers making various extensions. I don't use a lot of extensions, but if you're making your decision based on functionality, Chrome is probably the best choice. Finally, I can log into Chrome with my gmail account, and my settings and extensions sync to whatever device I use. Whether I'm using a Mac, Windows 7 machine, Windows 10 machine, Chromebook, Android phone, or iPad, I sign in with my gmail account, and I get all my stuff set up automatically.

    Microsoft should just admit defeat, and stop trying to make their own browser. Create a metro-themed fork of Chrome if you have to, but stop trying to make Edge happen. It's not going to happen.

  7. Re:Who cares? by darkain · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually YES. It is called "Market Competition", ya'know, that thing we bitch about lacking in the ISP industry? With there being Webkit, Blink, Gecko, and Trident all competing for top dog right now, us, the users all win. Each of the engines are trying to be the fastest, most accurate and complete HTML5/CSS3 representation, and now the longest battery life for mobile devices. So while *YOU* may not use Edge/Trident, Microsoft is still forcing Google, Opera and others to up their game in specific benchmarks that do matter to quite a few users. So yes, in the end we all win, and should care about the competition between these products.

  8. Re:Who cares? by Daltorak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    According to HTML5 Test we see the following... Edge 14 460 Chrome 52 492 FireFox 48 461 Safari 9.1 370

    I guess Edge is getting there. It is on Par with FireFox and beats safari... However chrome has a strong lead.

    HTML 5 Test has made some questionable decisions about what specs should count towards the totals. Edge, for instance, is docked 4 points for not supporting Shadow DOM, but this spec is still in draft form and nowhere near completion. Same story with Web Animations.... still an Editor's Draft, but is worth 3 points. Same with MediaStream Recording..... 2 points. Same with window.requestIdleCallback..... 1 point. Same with Credential Management Level 1.... 3 points. Same with Speech Recognition..... 3 points. Same with WebGL 2 ..... 5 points.

    Do you really think it's wise to give credit to a web browser for implementing something that is in draft status and is likely to change? That's bad for web compatibility, not good. Right? Chrome loves implementing these features early, but web developers can't really take advantage of them because they're at risk of some future browser upgrade breaking their site.