IE8 = Longer Battery Life on Laptops?

By Kevin Parrish
published

A recent test shows that Internet Explorer 8 provides more laptop battery time than Firefox, Chrome, and other browsers.

There's nothing worse than trolling through your favorite video-related website and the laptop suddenly gives up the ghost, or a twenty-page document is ultimately lost because the last drop of battery juice wasn't long enough to save the file. Savvy laptop owners look for ways to reduce the load on the battery by turning off junk applications and services, however AnandTech recently discovered that battery life can be extended by using certain web browsers.

Our friends at AnandTech tested the latest version of the most popular Windows browsers on three different laptops: Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 2, Firefox 3.5.2, Opera 10.0b3, and Safari 4. Believe it or not, Microsoft's latest browser offering won in the taste test, providing a whopping 5 to 10 minutes of additional battery life in comparison to the other power leeches; a super-long thirty minutes more than Apple's graphic-intensive Safari browser.

To perform the browser benchmark, ArandTech used Gateway's NV5807u (Intel-based) and NV5214u (AMD-based) laptops as well as the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA (Intel Atom). The Gateway laptops were running Windows Vista, and the Eee PC running Windows XP. Although Internet Explorer 8 provided more battery time on both laptops, Firefox with AdBlock trailed behind by mere minutes, followed by Chrome 2; Firefox 3.5.2 sat in fourth position on the AMD laptop while Opera 9.64 was fourth on the Intel-based laptop.

As for the ASUS Eee PC, Chrome 2 actually provided longer battery time, followed by Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 and Opera 9.64. As AnandTech pointed out, Safari 4 was the worst choice for battery life under Windows, however the site speculates that Apple's browser performs better in OS X.

Kevin Parrish
33 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cryogenic
    Maybe because it's slower and you get to watch less pages ...
    Reply
  • dingumf
    LOLWUT?

    CryogenicMaybe because it's slower and you get to watch less pages ...
    Probably so.


    Also, this test which is bull, does not proove IE 8 uses less system resources.

    THIS CHART IS BULL
    Reply
  • what about the newest beta of chrome version 4 i would like to see a more indepth test or review of the browsers which includes the latest betas to give a more through conclusion.
    Reply
  • you people are all apple nut-huggers. IE 9 "just works" all the others are only good until something don't work and then you use the app that "just works" NUT-HUGGERS you are all.
    Reply
  • hey google nut-huggers. Google made chrome so they can data-mine everything you do. freaking idiots, read the ula. They are the freaking UMBRELLA company and soon they will run the world from a smoke filled room. "Mr. President, we know that you googled midget porn in 1999. We also know that you had 2 facebook accounts and uploaded pictures in womens panties."
    Reply
  • matt87_50
    ugh, when Google start creating biological weapons in huge underground labs and selling them to the highest bidder, then I might take notice. till then, I don't put sensitive information on the net anyway, and if all it means is that the annoying ads I get bombarded with are more relevant to me, well, so much the better. futhermore, we should stop just assuming that the browser made by the biggest software company in the world, by the same company that rote the damn operating system, will just be shitter than the rest. now that they have competition, maybe they've upped their game.

    still, how did they do the test? did they just leave it on one page for the whole test? or did they load lots of pages? meaning load times could have effected the test results? (the slower browser may not have had time to load the more intensive pages at the end of the test for instance?)
    Reply
  • ravewulf
    Basically, don't use Safari
    Reply
  • maigo
    it works great until you get all the viruses that target IE
    Reply
  • koblec
    So... 7 extra minutes of battery life, or a safer, faster browser?
    Reply
  • frozenlead
    In other words, I'll turn my screen brightness down a notch and still use Firefox. Great.
    Reply