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Internet Explorer 8: Best Browser for Your Battery?

by Terrence O'Brien on September 15, 2009 at 07:32 AM

What's The Best Browser for Your Battery?
The War of the Web Browsers mostly takes place on one battlefield: speed. And while Google's Chrome is the clear winner on that front, there are other skirmishes -- like those over add-ons and resource usage -- of which Firefox is the clear victor.

Until now the only victories that Internet Explorer could claim were 'Largest Install Base' and 'Most Vulnerable to Hackers.' But tech blog AnandTech decided to pit the browsers against each other based on how quickly they drain your laptop battery. Surprisingly, IE8 wins with the longest Web surfing time.

AnandTech tested IE8, Chrome 2, Firefox 3.5 (with and without Ad-Block installed), Opera 9 and 10, and Safari 4 on three different machines: an AMD laptop and an Intel laptop, both with Vista installed, and an Intel Atom-powered netbook with Windows XP. IE8 lead the pack on both Vista-powered machines, beating the second-place Firefox with Ad-Block by seven minutes on the AMD PC, and by five minutes on the Intel machine. Safari 4 came in dead last on both Vista laptops, trailing IE8 by over 40 minutes.

On the netbook, the story was slightly different, with Chrome 2 besting IE by 13 minutes, perhaps indicating that Chrome was designed for netbook operating systems from the beginning. Safari again brought up the rear on the netbooks, trailing Chrome by over two hours (!) and Internet Explorer by 109 minutes.

So, if your primary concern is squeezing the most life out of your laptop battery, Internet Explorer is shockingly the way to go. On a netbook, your best bet is Chrome. However, it's clear in all cases that using Safari 4 is the worst thing you could do for your mobile browsing experience -- at least on a Windows PC. [From: AnandTech, via DownloadSquad]

Tags: battery life, BatteryLife, browser, browser wars, BrowserWars, chrome, firefox, internet explorer, InternetExplorer, opera, safari, top, web browser, WebBrowser

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