Internet Explorer 9 is outgreening rival browsers, including Chrome 10, Firefox 4.0, Opera 11 and Safari 5 according to tests performed by Microsoft.
The software that users run on their computer has a direct impact on power consumption, and it’s obvious to see that the two are connected through hardware. The more efficient a program, the better it will leverage the underlying hardware.
And Internet Explorer 9 is at the top of the browser game when it comes down to environmental impact.
And before users shrug off the very idea of a lower carbon footprint browser, they should know that there are repercussions of being green that they absolutely do care about.
In optimizing IE9 to use less power than rival browser, the software giant is ensuring that customers get to use an efficient program which will not drain the battery as fast as some of the alternatives they might be opting for.
“For many customers, battery life is the most important gauge of power consumption. A typical laptop uses a 56 Watt hour battery, which means the laptop can consume 56 Watts worth of energy for one hour before running out,” revealed
Jason Weber, IE Performance Lead. “The fewer Watts the browser consumes the longer the laptop battery will last.”
Microsoft’s green tests for browsers involved measuring power consumption in six scenarios, the first of which involved a machine running just Windows 7 as the baseline.
Weber noted that additional scenarios covered both HTML4 and HTML5 sites:
“- Browsers navigated to about:blank (power consumption of the browser UI).
- Loading one of the world’s most popular news Web sites (common HTML4 scenario).
- Running the HTML5 Galactic experience (representative of graphical HTML5 scenario).
- Fish swimming around the FishIE Tank (what test is complete without FishIE).”
A typical 56 Watt laptop running IE9 has a battery life of 3:45 hrs, the longest out of all browser, and outlasting the all browsers but by almost one hour, with the exception of Firefox 4.
Battery life was just 2:56 hrs with Chrome 10, 3:35 hrs with Firefox 4, 2:43 hrs with Opera 11 and 2:55 hrs with Safari 5.
“Browsers play a significant and important role in overall power consumption. The more efficiently a browser uses power the longer the battery will last in a mobile device, the lower the electricity costs, and the smaller the environment impact,” Weber added.
How a browser takes advantage of the underlying hardware makes a significant impact on power consumption not to mention performance and user experience. As computing becomes more mobile, and as the HTML5 based Web becomes pervasive it’s important that browsers make power consumption a focus.”
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows Vista SP2 64-bit edition and Windows Server 2008 SP2 64-bit edition is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 64-bit edition, Windows 7 SP1 64-bit edition, Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit edition and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit edition is available for download here.
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