Posts Tagged benchmarks
It’s Time For a New MobileMark
Posted by jasoncross in Media, PC Tech on October 6, 2009
Battery life ratings on laptops are a lie. Okay, that’s melodramatic: they’re not a lie, they’re just not telling you the truth you think they are. You read some review or look at some spec sheet or label on the shelf in a store and it says “5 hours battery life” and you think you’re going to be able to use your notebook for 5 hours. Then the battery dies in 2 1/2 hours or less. In fact, that “half of what they claim” rule of thumb turns out to be a pretty good one.
As they point out in a pretty neat article about the issue at Icrontic, the problem is that the industry standard for measuring battery life is a program called MobileMark 2007. This program basically runs your computer through some productivity apps, which are pretty easily cached into RAM on modern notebooks so you don’t get much hard disk usage. These run until the battery dies, and that’s your battery life benchmark. Wi-Fi is almost always disabled, the laptop is almost always in its most power-saving and low performance profile, screen brightness is usually at 50% or less, etc.
A Quick Note on Windows 7 Benchmarks
Posted by jasoncross in Media, PC Tech on August 8, 2009
As we head up to the general availability date for Windows 7, and have moved past the date when it’s available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers, you’re going to see a lot of benchmarks.
Every site on the ‘net is going to test it’s speed relative to this or that setup. Some will use whatever machine they have lying around, some will construct machines to hit specific spec targets. This ZDNet article does a pretty good job. This browser comparison on BetaNews is somewhat questionable (mixing feature support and standards compliance tests with performance tests to single scores). DailyTech, for some reason, only used 32-bit (when 64-bit is so popular these days).
One thing none of the benchmarks show, but you hear again and again from those that use Windows 7, is just how much more “responsive” and “snappy” it feels. The time between when you click and something happens is noticeably diminished. You really notice it when you go back and use a machine with XP or Vista on it. Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that benchmark applications simply don’t show, and is very hard to measure. Don’t take my word for it…ask any tech journalist who had to set up and run Windows 7 vs. Vista vs. XP benchmarks for a recent article. Every one I’ve met (and this is the kind of company I keep) will say that numbers aside, Win7 feels much faster. As intangible as that may seem, it’s worth keeping in the back of your mind when you see miles of bar charts comparing Office performance and PCMark Vantage scores and whatnot.