Work

VLC, Windows Media Player Stand Out In Performance Tests

The TechRadar site decided to settle the matter of media player performance in definitive fashion, loading up a few test files in different formats in 16 different media players, including Lifehacker favourites VLC Media Player, Media Player Classic and Windows Media Player, the built-in app we’ve recently learned to love. The results?


April 14, 2010
Work

Browser Speed Tests: iPhone’s Mobile Safari Vs Opera Mini

This morning Apple surprised everyone by approving the Opera Mini web browser for the iPhone and iPod touch, bringing one of the most popular mobile browsers to the most popular smartphone. So how does it stack up?


March 11, 2010
Communicate

HTML5 Vs. Flash: HTML5 Isn’t Always Better

Flash has taken quite a beating lately by everyone from Apple (no Flash on iPad or iPhones) to YouTube (transitioning to HTML5 video) to users sick of security exploits and sluggish browsers. Everyone’s looking for the silver bullet that kills Flash, but is HTML5 it?


January 27, 2010
Work

Browser Speed Tests: Firefox 3.6, Chrome 4, Opera 10.5

Firefox 3.6 is out, Chrome’s stable version got a big upgrade, and Opera 10.5 is inching toward release. It’s a great time for us to break out the timer, process manager and code tracker for some up-to-date browser speed tests.


November 21, 2009
Work

PST Desktop Live Makes Performance Benchmarking Simple

Linux Live: If you want to put your computer through the paces and get some feedback and benchmarks, you’ll be hard pressed to find a tool more packed with tests than the Phoronix Test Suite Live CD.


November 4, 2009
Work

Browser Speed Tests: The Windows 7 Results

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1, like every other browser, makes a claim to being “faster”. We took Firefox and all the other latest browsers, put them on Windows 7, and ran them through our human-measured speed tests to vet the bragging.


October 1, 2009
Work

Performance Tests Show Windows 7 “Marginally” Faster Than Vista

Windows 7 will officially be released on October 22, but PC World has already given the new operating system a side-by-side spin with Vista and concluded that it’s only “marginally faster” than its older sibling.


September 4, 2009
Work

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 4.0 And Opera 10 Take On All Challengers

Opera 10 final is out, Chrome just turned one year old and Firefox 3.5 has settled into stability. It’s time once again to break out the timers and speed test today’s web browsers.


June 11, 2009
Work

Lifehacker Speed Tests: Safari 4, Chrome 2 And More

Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer all reached new final versions recently, while Firefox and Opera pushed their own web browsers into almost-there betas. We pulled out the digital stopwatch and testing kits to see how they measured up.


September 27, 2008
Work

Browser Speed Tests: The Compiled, Up-To-Date Results

Back when Firefox 3′s final release candidate dropped, we ran some tests to compare its page-loading, memory use, and technical timing to Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and Safari for Windows. Then Google Chrome arrived, so we pitted it against the betas for Firefox 3.1 and Internet Explorer 8, and shared the results. The tests were by and large the same, but many commenters wisely asked to see all the results, betas or no betas. Well, today we’ve patched together all our data, thrown in a fresh test of the Opera 9.6 beta, and we’re sharing all the graphy goodness. Read on to see a full comparison of the major browsers you can load on Windows.