Window weblog 7Tutorials has done another round of its web browser battery usage tests. The results are pretty much the same as usual: Internet Explorer keeps your computer running longer.
Which version of Internet Explorer (Touch or Desktop) depends on your hardware, but on each machine, Internet Explorer came out ahead. In some cases, by a pretty big margin — for example, Chrome lasted nearly two hours shorter on a Toshiba tablet, and about an hour shorter on the Surface Pro 2.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you should always use Internet Explorer, but if you’re somewhere without an outlet, it may be worth a temporary switch. Check out 7Tutorial’s most recent round of tests at the link below.
Which Internet Browser Will Make Your Battery Last Longer? [7Tutorials]
Comments
7 responses to “Web Browser Battery Usage Compared”
Chrome on the Surface Pro 2 is horrendous in pretty much every other way, so this isn’t much of a surprise. Firefox results were good news though.
The two fingered scrolling seems to have broken with Chrome on my Surface Pro 2. Have you had this happen as well?
It’s never worked particularly well for me (it always seemed to mimic a mouse’s scroll wheel, which meant scrolling in the opposite direction to how most tablets do it), but yeah, it’s gone completely now.
Still, not surprising. Google have been making some very dickish moves when it comes to Windows lately:
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/03/from-the-tops-box-google-calendar-in-windows-8-diy-mallets-and-laundry-timers/
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/08/microsoft-is-super-pissed-at-google-for-breaking-its-youtube-app/
I think there may be more going on in the background here then anything. Google Chrome and FireFox are likely to have automatic update software built into them which is constantly asking for updates, IE gets it done through automatic updates which is built into the OS.
I just have the feeling that they all take up the same battery if you technically didn’t have all the components running within the OS already. Also IE doesn’t update plugins instantly/automatically like other browsers do.
If Firefox and chrome were searching constantly for updates it would be a pretty flawed design. They usually do a daily or on a first open browser check. Essentially the same as windows.
IE is done through Windows updates though, not through an update service that’s constantly running, Google Chrome at least comes paired with the service “Google Update Service (gupdate)”
just curious to see if stopping the update service then increases battery performance, if so by how much and if the PC in question was essentially running inbuilt IE services on top of the other web browsers, which gives IE the ultimate victory every time.
The browser that pisses me off the most is… wait for it… Internet Explorer….!!