Wait, Opera is still a thing?
Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
101–110 of 220 posts
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I read the blog is that the adblocking is enabled to show that even _with_ an expensive extension enabled it still beats Edge, but that was in my opinion not the gist of the post. The post was about that microsoft is not transparent about the methodology/setup/scripts/target websites used. A third party should be able to support Microsoft's claims. Is it possible for the setup to be published to your github.c…
Adblock isn't an "expensive extension". Ads are the expensive thing, so blocking them saves power.
Also Opera has built-in blocking. It's not a JavaScript-heavy extension to begin with. ;)
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#103Edge platform team employee here. A couple thoughts on methodology, focusing on our scripted test (under "stay productive longer" at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/06/20/more-... ), which is most comparable to Opera's test; nobody seems to challenge our Netflix results: * We did not enable ad blockers, because we were testing the efficiency of the network stack, browser rendering pipeline, etc.; if…
Doesn't the Netflix test really test GPU decoding vs software decoding?
I'm not 100% sure on this, so any clarification welcome, but I thought that Netflix content contracts DRM requirements allowed GPU decoding via Playready, but not on some others like Widevine. Would the Netflix test still show such an advantage for Edge if there weren't any DRM?
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#104Edge platform team employee here. A couple thoughts on methodology, focusing on our scripted test (under "stay productive longer" at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/06/20/more-... ), which is most comparable to Opera's test; nobody seems to challenge our Netflix results: * We did not enable ad blockers, because we were testing the efficiency of the network stack, browser rendering pipeline, etc.; if…
It would be interesting to see this test run again with ad blockers enabled on each browser (the latest version of Edge has support for extensions).
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Not neccessarily same input - all depends how adblock works. I assumed that with adblock, my browser will not even send a request to fetch the ads, so I save on network traffic, and the browser will not have to render whatever would have been fetched - this to me is a different input (to the browser's rendering engine) than you would have without adblock.
With all this said, "proper-er" benchmark would be to show each of the browser's power consumption with or without adblock, with or without battery saver in Opera's case, all this done on a set of websites which are ad-heavy and ad-light. :)
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#106On a side note: I've been testing edge on a Dell 1012 netbook (atom, 2gb) and it beats Chrome for rendering YouTube videos (480p max!) which I found surprising (video stutters on Chrome).
However on my main laptop when running scratch (ok flash based), cloud based games are better sync'd when using Chrome (it's a slither.io clone). Overall battery life is exceptable for both browsers.
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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!
That's also what Microsoft did.
It's quite possible that both results are valid. It sounds like there's big difference in the sites that Microsoft visited compared to Opera.
It seems an even better methodology would be to record actual user browsing sessions, and then replay them through different browsers and measure power consumption.
Opera's simulated browsing session does not sound particularly sophisticated IMO.
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Your analogy collapses then though because you need people to be able to choose whether to travel at day/night at will for the comparison. Perhaps a better (but still flawed) way would be to say if the Opera browser included a free pass for toll roads and Edge didn't - so with the standard Opera offering you'd be getting a faster journey.
The point to me is that the situation is more nuanced than Microsoft apparently chose to present it.
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#109Microsoft 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.
> Not to discredit their results, but what it shows is that users who used Edge consumed less power than Chrome or Firefox.
The workloads Microsoft simulated were held constant for every platform and instrumented via a common command-and-control testing library. It is very much apples-to-apples. The additional telemetry they released is even more confirmation.
Opera replied by enabling a pair of special default-off features, both of which significantly change the workload and the user experience for their browser, put it on a random laptop pair which might not even be from the same lot or subtly different models, and then made a timelapse.
Re: Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test
#110Edge platform team employee here. A couple thoughts on methodology, focusing on our scripted test (under "stay productive longer" at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/06/20/more-... ), which is most comparable to Opera's test; nobody seems to challenge our Netflix results: * We did not enable ad blockers, because we were testing the efficiency of the network stack, browser rendering pipeline, etc.; if…
So where is your script? Or are we just supposed to trust you?