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

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#81

Post by harigov » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

matmann2001 wrote: post #62

dhaivatpandya wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or they just ignore normalization, since it's for PR and not an actual scientific study meant to withstand scrutiny.

The fact that they spent so much money in hardware to test the battery usage and the amount of effort they put in to improve doesn't seem to imply that this was just a PR stunt.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#82

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

bialpio wrote: post #25

guroot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with the ad blocker being a feature in opera out of the box? They were trying to show that opera can achieve better battery performance based on it's features and optimizations. Does that not include the ad-blocker?

In that case you might as well browse different websites because using adblocker makes your browser render different content.

yeah it's like comparing MPG of similar cars but Opera test is done in the middle of the night and competitors at rush hour

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#83

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:41 PM UTC

dep_b wrote: post #76

Opera being better than Edge is a claim I might believe but I don't think Edge is almost as bad as Chrome. I stopped using Chrome when I discovered it took hours off my battery life on a MacBook. Edge can't be almost as bad. Intuitively I would believe the ranking in terms of battery life would be Safari > Edge or Opera > Firefox > Chrome.

opera likes to boldly claim it was the first browser to do power management on pages but truth is Microsoft has done this for many years prior and has the operating system integration as an advantage.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/159269-internet-explore...

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#84

Post by a1a » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

zeta0134 wrote: post #47

feld wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is welcome to include a native content blocker in their rendering engine

While I applaud their work and appreciate that there is an extension framework at all, I seriously doubt this will happen unless they plan to also redesign their home pages to remove the ads. I just loaded up MSN.com and scrolled down the page. I count 3 ads total: one gigantic banner at the very top of the page before all of the content, and two smaller panners that pop into place as you scroll. These are served by…

I assume they would implement a white-list allowing "some non-intrusive adds" similar to Adblock.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#85

Post by tgb » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:47 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #53

Splines wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

That's what opera just did!

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#86

Post by Sylos » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

nachtigall wrote: post #28

Where's firefox in the perf?

In the battery-benchmarks that I've seen so far, Firefox was always the leading browser, so granted those benchmarks did not test Opera's battery saving mode, Firefox should still be at least in second place.

And Firefox does also have a native ad-blocker, so if you enable that, too, I could imagine that it maybe even still outperforms Opera's battery saving mode, but yeah, a proper benchmark would be good...

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#87

Post by randyrand » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

Raphael wrote: post #79

> Reducing frame rate to 30 frames per second Many users may not like this.

Only enabled in power saver mode

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#88

Post by cronjobber » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:57 PM UTC

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…

> they also release statistics based on Windows 10 telemetry showing that Edge has better battery life

It's such a pity I don't use Microsoft Windows 10, because I'd be so thrilled to know that through the magic of telemetry, everything I do on a Microsoft Windows 10 enabled computer could help Microsoft win some crucial PR battles.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#89

Post by ygra » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:59 PM UTC

post_break wrote: post #66

What really surprised me were the run times of that laptop. Man that is crappy battery life for both instances. My thinkpad T220 with extended battery and 13" Macbook pro both decimate that battery life.

The Lenovo Yoga (about 550 €) is hardly on the same price level as the ThinkPad or Macbook Pro (1500 €) ... And you even mentioned the extended battery.

Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test

#90

Post by Jerry2 » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

callesgg wrote: post #67

I have found that safari gives best battery time on OSX (like 9 hours of use vs 6-7 when on firefox). But i generally dont use safari as battery time is not the most important factor in my common use cases.

>But i generally dont use safari as battery time is not the most important factor in my common use cases.

I use Safari for almost everything. It's by far the best browser for browsing and just reading & enjoying the web. Reader interface and the speed of it is still unbeatable.

I use Chrome for web development, however.