IT website AnandTech.com has published a report showing that the web browser you choose can have a significant affect on your laptop’s battery life.
The site tested Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5.2 (with and without Adblock), Chrome 2, Safari 4 and Opera 9.6.4 and 10.0b3 on four laptops and netbooks using Windows Vista. It found that Internet Explorer delivered the best result overall, increasing battery life by up to 33% more than Safari 4, which came last.
Firefox and Chrome, which performed similarly, followed by Opera 9.6.4. Opera 10 trailed by between 5% and 9%, depending on the computer, but it still beat Safari by up to 9%. Using Adblock with Firefox boosted battery life by up to 5.7% more than Firefox used without Adblock.
Laptops showed a wider variation in battery life than notebooks. The site attributed Safari’s poor performance to a bad pad implementation of Adobe Flash or inefficiencies in HTML rendering code. Safari typically performs better on Macintosh OS X.
Author Jarred Walton gave the report’s results a 3% error margin.
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