Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#51

Post by DasIch » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #48

overgryphon wrote: post #38

Microsoft didn't just do a battery test, they also release statistics based on Windows 10 telemetry showing that Edge has better battery life than Chrome, Firefox: "In addition to testing battery life internally, Microsoft also looks at tens of millions of PCs that send telemetry data to the firm, Weber said. And what it sees there is simple: A small advantage over Firefox, but massive gains of about 50 percent addit…

Which is impressive I guess given that Firefox users often use extensions of varying quality?

I'm sure there are a lot of Firefox extensions of questionable quality but I would expect that at least the popular ones are of fairly decent quality. I also would assume that only a small minority of users know about and actually use extensions.

Even people who do use extensions probably don't really use more than an adblocker.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#52

Post by nicotonic » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #30

darkmuck wrote: post #29

Now that Opera Software is owned by a Chinese company I've avoided their browser anyways, regardless of potential battery/performance benefits.

Isn't that just xenophobia?

Saying something like that is only bad and wrong if it's about Israel.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#53

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

Splines wrote: post #44

overgryphon wrote: post #38

Microsoft didn't just do a battery test, they also release statistics based on Windows 10 telemetry showing that Edge has better battery life than Chrome, Firefox: "In addition to testing battery life internally, Microsoft also looks at tens of millions of PCs that send telemetry data to the firm, Weber said. And what it sees there is simple: A small advantage over Firefox, but massive gains of about 50 percent addit…

Not to discredit their results, but what it shows is that users who used Edge consumed less power than Chrome or Firefox. Whether that means Edge is more power efficient, or devices where Edge is used more often are more power efficient, or users who select for Edge tend to visit sites that allow Edge to be more power efficient isn't clear. To be fair to both sides, this is a really hard thing to measure.

> To be fair to both sides, this is a really hard thing to measure.

Is it though? It's more the fact that Big Data is totally useless because it contains thousands of uncontrolled variables that confound the results.

If you really want to know which browser is more power efficient, get a sample of the commonly visited sites and then visit the same sites on the same common devices in different browsers and see which one uses less power.

You can still get the wrong outcome by using a biased sample on purpose, but then the outcome is wrong because you fudged it, not because it's hard to get the real answer.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#54

Post by dhaivatpandya » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

Splines wrote: post #44

overgryphon wrote: post #38

Microsoft didn't just do a battery test, they also release statistics based on Windows 10 telemetry showing that Edge has better battery life than Chrome, Firefox: "In addition to testing battery life internally, Microsoft also looks at tens of millions of PCs that send telemetry data to the firm, Weber said. And what it sees there is simple: A small advantage over Firefox, but massive gains of about 50 percent addit…

Not to discredit their results, but what it shows is that users who used Edge consumed less power than Chrome or Firefox. Whether that means Edge is more power efficient, or devices where Edge is used more often are more power efficient, or users who select for Edge tend to visit sites that allow Edge to be more power efficient isn't clear. To be fair to both sides, this is a really hard thing to measure.

It seems pretty unlikely that the data wouldn't be normalized by some metric of intensity of use since this is pretty much the first thing anyone would think of. Normalizing even by something as simple as "number of websites visited" would, I imagine, significantly reduce the contribution of such factors to the differences observed.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#55

Post by PeCaN » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #30

darkmuck wrote: post #29

Now that Opera Software is owned by a Chinese company I've avoided their browser anyways, regardless of potential battery/performance benefits.

Isn't that just xenophobia?

I think it's just that the investment firm who bought Opera also owns Qihoo 360, a notoriously sketchy “antivirus” (and I use the term loosely) company. There's probably nothing to worry about, given that Qihoo doesn't actually own Opera.

That said, I think a general lack of trust toward the PRC is understandable.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#56

Post by Spivak » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #39

pfortuny wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope: it is Statephobia and States have no right to honor, just people eith individual bodies.

That seems like splitting hairs to me. Would you want people to reject your software just because of your nationality or that of your company? Probably not. So it seems to me that an implication of the golden rule is that we shouldn't do that.

Software written by Chinese people -- no problem.

Software written by persons and companies subject to the will of the Chinese government -- huge problem.

It's really no different than European countries not wanting to do business with US companies because of the NSA.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#57

Post by Retric » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

bialpio wrote: post #26

Quai wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might argue that not rendering ads is a valid method to save battery.

Correct, it is a valid method to save a battery. It makes the comparisons invalid though, since you are not testing with the same input.

You are testing more or less the same input just producing different output. This was a common strategy where graphics cards for example would degrade image quality for speed when a driver noticed you where running a benchmark.

Which is one of the reasons benchmarks are so difficult.

PS: A more insidious problem is when you specifically optimize for something because it's a benchmark.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#58

Post by JTon » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

kraftman wrote: post #21

Obviously this is anecdotal but I've been messing around with my laptop a lot recently trying to get to a full day of work on battery, and the best setup I've found is windows 10 Insider with Edge + adblock. Opera battery saver is great but they should enable it automatically whenever you're on battery, as it has no performance impact that I've noticed.

Edge allows extensions now or are you using an OS-level adblock?

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#59

Post by cordite » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #34

cordite wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that fair with Bing's ad network?

How is that the user's problem?

Microsoft adding an ad-blocker by default, while also owning an ad service seems to be a set of conflicting interests.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#60

Post by niftich » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #34

cordite wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that fair with Bing's ad network?

How is that the user's problem?

It's not, but it's Microsoft's problem. The reason Edge exists is to try to win back market share from Chrome. The reason Chrome exists is to perpetuate the Google ecosystem by making Google offerings cross-platform, but more importantly Chrome-platform -- not just Google ads.

But you're right, Microsoft will have to decide which one is more important: driving ad eyeballs to Microsoft properties at the expense of Google properties -- or -- decreasing the share of users using Chrome and by proxy, the attractiveness of Google's integrated cloud email/drive/docs offerings.