IE8 Beats Other Browsers In Laptop Battery Life

WARM3CH writes "AnandTech tested a laptop with an AMD CPU, a laptop with an Intel CPU, and a netbook to compare battery life while running Internet Explorer 8, Opera 10, Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Chrome. They tested on simple web pages and flash-infested ones. IE8 had the best battery life on both laptops (followed by FF + AdBlock), and Safari had the worst battery life. On the netbook, Chrome was slightly ahead of IE8. The report concludes: 'Overall, Internet Explorer and Firefox + AdBlock consistently place near the top, with Chrome following closely behind. Opera 10 Beta 3 didn't do as well as Opera 9.6.4, and in a couple quick tests, it doesn't appear that the final release of Opera 10 changes the situation at all. Opera in general — version 9 or 10 — looks like it doesn't do as well as the other major browsers. Safari is at the back, by a large margin, on all three test notebooks. We suspect that Safari 4 does better under OS X, however, so the poor Windows result probably won't matter to most Safari users.'"

But what is the justification?

[physicsphairy]

*Why* IE 8 gets better battery life than Safari? Is it simply because IE 8 has better, more efficient code? Is it because Safari is spending more processor resources getting me my pages quickly? (in which case perhaps Safari still gives the highest battery measured by numbers of pages visited) Is it because of OS integration (all the tests were run on Windows Vista or XP) in which case isn't IE (a) cheating (b) introducing other tradeoffs (security, etc.)? A virus might ultimately cost me more battery life, so even if my battery life is the solitary end in which I place concern, these other factors are still relevant. It is an interesting report, but given that the results are very close, I think it's hard to draw any substantial conclusions from it (except that viewing ads costs battery life).

Re:So in theory

[Rewind]

I don't really think it is all that bad. I use Firefox on my Windows desktop, Firefox on my Slackware desktop, and Safari on my MacBook Pro, neither have any additional plugins or anything like adblock. Just the default pop up blockers. Depends on where you browse I guess.

Re:So in theory

[sgant]

I have to agree. I'm on a Macbook Pro now and using Snow Leopard with it's 64-bit Safari. Everyone is saying how fast and quick Safari is...along with Chrome, but the simple fact is both of these browsers don't have Adblock so they're actually SLOWER than Firefox with Adblock because they all have to load in those ads.

Maybe Safari and Chrome are fast on a test....but in real world situations without adblock, they're slow.

But if you ran ie8...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you'd also be running Windows as your OS. How does running Windows affect battery life?

Re:This is a better test.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I suspect it may be due to Firefox's OCD about writing things to its database, and thus keeping the disk from spinning down.

Remember, even though nothing about web browsing should be disk-bound, Firefox has been shown to make it so under not especially exotic conditions.

Re:So in theory

[ivucica]

I have this fascinating ability that adblock users apparently lack: it's called "Ignore Irrelevance". You see, while those ads may be there ... I don't really see them. They are there if I concentrate hard enough to notice them ... but otherwise, they're not really there.

Probably explains how I can surf without adblock.

And, oh yeah, I occasionally like to support the site I'm visiting when I notice something actually interesting.

Re:The real conclusion

[bhtooefr]

And that is why IE8 has the best battery life - the IE version of the Flash player is hardware accelerated.

Re:This makes sense - it's better integrated.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of horseshit. ie8 has a completely seperate engine and uses the winhttp stack, it is not "just" a shell around explorer at all.

Re:Wait a second...

[bhtooefr]

Very simple experiment - obtain a temperature monitor that can show you CPU and GPU temperatures. (This usually needs discrete graphics, although some integrated graphics systems hide the northbridge temperature as the "PCI" temperature.) Monitor CPU load, as well.

Start a flash video in IE. Note what happens to all temperatures - CPU load will be low, CPU temps won't change much, GPU temps will rise.

Now, start a flash video in any other browser (that isn't IE-based.) CPU load will be (comparatively) high, and CPU temps will rise. GPU temps will stay steady, or at most climb a couple degrees just because of being heated by the CPU.

Re:So in theory

[ceoyoyo]

While the work of the artists who post on DeviantArt may or might not be worthless pieces of shit, a web page that sucks 100% of your CPU making it difficult to even close the page, never mind view it, most definitely is.