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Google Chrome Bests Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera In Independent Battery Life Tests (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTuber Linus Tech Tips has pitted Microsoft Edge against Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera and discovered that it does not deliver as strong a performance as Microsoft claims. Linus Tech Tips took four Dell Inspiron laptops, with the same specs, and found that Microsoft Edge trails Chrome and Opera in battery life tests. It would seem that it still beats Firefox, after all. However, the results are much, much closer than what Microsoft's own tests indicate. On average, the difference between Chrome, which offers the best battery life, and Microsoft Edge is under 40 minutes. Opera comes closer to Microsoft Edge than Chrome in this test. Even Creators Update, which based on Microsoft's test should help Microsoft Edge obliterate the competition, didn't help make it faster than Chrome. Linus says he used the same methodology that Microsoft used in its set of battery tests earlier this year, in which it declared Edge as the winner.
What else is new. In particular, about everything MS praises in Windows is either bogus or actually a disadvantage.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So did the reviewer, upon completing the first round with the four machines, then rotate the software under-test across the machines, rerun, rotate again, rerun, etc?
What were the parameters of the test? Was this some kind of scripting that compelled the browser to pull content without user interaction? How was that achieved, and could extra usage from that software have skewed results? What content was pulled-down? Were different kinds of content, reflecting different kinds of users/usage pulled-down?
I ask all of this because it affects the results. A single browser on a single laptop is a sample size of one. If the testing involved four out-of-the-box laptops with new batteries an dfour browsers, then one has a single data point for each browser. More testing is probably necessary to establish real results instead of just generating fanboy arguments.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's a web browser. It gives me access to the world wide web. Security and privacy are far, far more important than battery life. Chrome is made by Google, which is an absolute no-go when it comes to privacy. So, thanks, but no Chrome for me.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
A family member's machine was "running slow" so I setup Firefox and configured it not to use disk cache at all.
She has broadband internet and does not go near her monthly limit and frankly I think the network request can serve the content up faster than the laptop hard drive.
Google Chrome and other browsers lack the feature to really minimize disk writes by eliminating disk cache.
RAM is cheap and she generally just puts the thing in standby, meaning sites are still cached in RAM if their cache metadata hasn't expired them.
I'll bet it would beat all of the tested configurations hands down for battery life (energy efficiency and battery lifetime) as well as storage device (HDD, etc.) lifetime.
Disk cache doesn't make sense, so if Firefox is the only browser that TRULY does not write to disk, then reward them for their forward thinking if their browser has configuration settings that can tilt the axis of the test.
Just a feeling, but I suspect HTML 2.0 would have lapped the field, and then gone out for an late-night pub crawl, returning home at the cock of dawn to romp nekid until the sun crosses over the yard arm with an insatiable beer-goggles Wonder Bra, and still find enough energy in the tank to chew off his arm a few hours later.
Windows has recently stopped reminding me that switching to Edge will gain me 2 hours battery life, despite my laptop being plugged in 95% of the time.
They're now telling me constantly that I need to adjust my screen brightness settings to save my battery, despite being plugged in to an external monitor with no backlight adjustment capability and hence no control to change it in the settings this "helpful" tip takes me to.
Go Windows 10!