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Windows 10 Warns Chrome and Firefox Users About Battery Drain, Recommends Switching To Edge (venturebeat.com) 377

A month after Microsoft claimed that its Edge web browser is more power efficient than Google Chrome and Firefox, the company is now warning Windows 10 users about the same. VentureBeat reports: Microsoft has turned on a new set of Windows Tips that warn Windows 10 users that Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox is draining their laptop's battery. The solution, according to the notification, is to use Microsoft Edge.In a statement to the publication, the company said: "These Windows Tips notifications were created to provide people with quick, easy information that can help them enhance their Windows 10 experience, including information that can help users extend battery life. That said, with Windows 10 you can easily choose the default browser and search engine of your choice."
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Windows 10 Warns Chrome and Firefox Users About Battery Drain, Recommends Switching To Edge

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  • 'Enhancements' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:02PM (#52543099)

    You know what would enhance my windows 10 experience? Allow me to disable driver-breaking updates.

    • by gweilo8888 ( 921799 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:05PM (#52543123)
      You know what would enhance your Windows 10 experience even more? Uninstalling it.
      • Re:'Enhancements' (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:28PM (#52543305)

        Precisely. Using that same logic, they should suggest you uninstall windows and install Linux with just a shell. :)

        • by duckintheface ( 710137 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @05:12PM (#52544059)

          In the late 1990s Microsoft was found guilty of violations of the anti-trust laws for using their monopoly in one market (operating systems) to leverage market share in another market (browsers). Through a number a dirty tactics, Microsoft stole the browser market from Netscape and avoided the creation of an independent, OS-neutral, platform for running applications.

          Now, twenty years later, Microsoft up to its old tricks. Using the Windows 10 market share to leverage its browser. I'm thinking the Department of Justice might want to take a look at the Microsoft consent decree from their last conviction.

          • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

            by amiga3D ( 567632 )

            If you look at Microsoft's campaign donations pre and post monopoly conviction you'll see what happened. They used every dirty trick in the book before the conviction and made almost zero campaign donations. Post conviction they went back to dirty tricks but began handing out heaps of cash to our elected officials. Strangely no one at the justice department seems to notice the dirty tricks anymore. I'm sure there is no connection though.

          • Let me dust off a quote from one of my posts on various forums back in the 1990s:

            "The best solution is to break up Microsoft into two companies: An OS company which does nothing but produce Windows, not favoring any software. And an Applications company which makes software like Office, IE, etc., not favoring any operating system."
    • Re:'Enhancements' (Score:4, Informative)

      by rubycodez ( 864176 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:18PM (#52543239)

      he only needs to install this patch http://goodbye-microsoft.com/ [goodbye-microsoft.com]

  • by Dan East ( 318230 )

    And when you run Edge or Firefox on a Chromebook, Chrome OS warns.... Oh wait. You can't run 3rd party browsers at all under Google's Chrome OS.

    • by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:08PM (#52543165)

      Which would piss me off if they sold it as a general purpose computer instead of a "Chromebook" that runs... Chrome.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:10PM (#52543179)

      And when you run Edge or Firefox on a Chromebook, Chrome OS warns.... Oh wait. You can't run 3rd party browsers at all under Google's Chrome OS.

      firefox runs just great on my chromebook, just install chrubuntu and it's just another linux box.

      tell us about the os choices on your surface hardware

    • by Sax Russell 5449D29A ( 4449961 ) <sax.russell@protonmail.com> on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:39PM (#52543385)

      It's about holding a dominant position in the computer OS markets and utilizing that to further entrench your dominance. The same applies for example to Google using their dominant position on the search engine markets to promote their own products at the expense of competitors' visibility in search results.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 )

        In related news, the European commission starts noticing a possible abuse of Android to skew the market against competitors:
        https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/20/eu-commission-google-android-skew-market-competition-antitrust-vestager [theguardian.com]

        It seems quite possible that the next antitrust proceedings are brewing here...

      • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @04:14PM (#52543649) Journal

        Except Edge sucks so incredibly bad that even if it made my battery last three times as long I wouldn't use it. With great effort we've finally rolled out our default apps XML file through GPO settings to all but make Edge disappear, because that astonishingly terrible hunk of shit even wants to open PDF files by default.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Whether it's a steaming pile of diarrheatic human excrement... or not, is irrelevant. You should ignore its features and base your decisions on ethical point of views. Thst being said, what MS is doing is unethical. Ditch all MS products you can.

        • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          What's wrong with Edge? I find it and IE interchangeable. I don't use MS browsers much, but IE and Edge haven't seemed sufficiently different to make me prefer one over the other, though I don't use either extensively.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by joetomato ( 1073508 )

            What's wrong with Edge?

            Your favourites folder is no longer able to be redirected, (They're stored in some awful location like %appdata%/localLow/Microsoft /{00423025-2252342fj90fcj2903} in some awful proprietary blob database, so if you're in an environment that you might use multiple computers there's no way to sync your favourites unless you log into the computer with a microsoft account (Or Azure AD account) And the GPO's available at the moment to configure it are pretty much non-existant. You can set the home page and a cou

  • by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:04PM (#52543111)

    Chrome, Firefox, or for that matter anything not out of Microsoft won't run.

    • by Shadow99_1 ( 86250 ) <theshadow99@gmai l . com> on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:35PM (#52543353)

      Ironically Chrome runs just fine for me on Windows 10, however Edge does not. It regularly 'comes up' and then doesn't load correctly. This gives me a useless window that won't connect to sites on the internet. Ever. I open and close it enough it it may eventually open correctly. Chrome? Chrome always opens. Firefox did as well when I had it installed. Opera works fine and all the time as well. No idea why Edge can't work right, but it's the one I won't be using.

    • Will Microsoft pitch a warning that LibreOffice is stressing your hard drive more than a fresh copy of Office would? (click here to buy)

      Howabout you plug in your smart phone to charge, and Windows replies with a message that Android nerds are sad losers with tight pants and bad hair, quick use this coupon and receive a lovely Lumia and join the Windows Winner's Revolution.
      You heard it here first. Marketers gotta monetize.

      • Honestly, it would not surprise me if Microsoft started doing things like that. Windows 10 is more of a marketing platform than an operating system.

        • Given the rather mediocre market share of Win10 after a VIOLENTLY aggressive campaign I think it's fair to say it sucks at being either.

      • Yep, if your pants are tight, switching to Windows is a great way to shrink whatever may be causing the problem. Didn't know it also caused baldness though.
  • by Hardhead_7 ( 987030 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:05PM (#52543119)
    So what's the news? Google pushes you to download Chrome every time you visit their site.
    • by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:29PM (#52543313) Journal
      Google doesn't have a monopoly on the desktop... hasn't been convicted of illegally using that monopoly to give a market advantage vs competitors including their browser. That would be apples to apples if Microsoft were advertising Edge on bing.

      Yet again, Microsoft is up to their old tricks. Sleezily shoving windows 10 down the throats of users and now slimy tricks to get people to install their new browser.
      • Yup, Microsoft is the new Yahoo.

    • Yes, and Yahoo (remember them?) suggests you run Firefox. But these are routinely ignored, jammed somewhere on a corner of the page. Attentive users may be annoyed for a few moments before moving on, while novice users have no awareness it was ever there. I mean, the page is displaying, isn't it? It's like you drive to McDonald's, and see a sign that says "Your ride here would have been more fun in a Chevy Malibu!" Nevertheless, you've arrived, your attention turns to your craving for salty oily processed food, and you go on your way.

      It's a different thing when the OS itself bitches at you. They tend to look like dire warnings, that send dumb users to the phones asking "am I doing something wrong?" Like Amber-Alert signs flashing at you to dump your ride for a Chevy Malibu cause you're wasting gas or something.

    • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @04:00PM (#52543547) Journal
      Knowing Microsoft's history, I wouldn't at all be surprised if it detects a 3rd-party browser being used, and intentionally disables power management to force battery drain, to trick you into using their browser instead.

      Hey, nice battery you've got there, end user, it would be a shame if something.. HAPPENED to it.. Maybe you'd better use our Edge browser, you know, for your own protection

      • Don't contribute to malice what can be contributed to a browser being about as functional as as a program that calls sleep(); over and over again. Because while being super power efficient it is about as useful as Edge.

        I attribute Chrome and Firefox's higher power use to actually attempting to render the damn web pages.

    • by Marlin Schwanke ( 3574769 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @04:12PM (#52543637)

      So what's the news? Google pushes you to download Chrome every time you visit their site.

      I don't have to use Google. In fact, I use DuckDuckGo instead. I pretty much have to use Windows for business reasons. You see the difference?

      Then there is simply the old school belief that a computer OS should be a neutral platform, enabling the user to make the computer do its bidding, not serving up ads that you can't turn off on a device that you actually need to use.

      • I don't have to use Google. In fact, I use DuckDuckGo instead. I pretty much have to use Windows for business reasons. You see the difference?

        It depends on what industry you're in. In some industries, you can get away with Wine. In others, such as Android application development, you need to use at least some Google services.

  • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • No thanks, again. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ITRambo ( 1467509 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:08PM (#52543159)
    I've found Edge to be unstable on many sites. It's also slower than Chrome, Firefox, or Opera. The biggest issue I have with Edge is that I cannot add uBlock Origin as an extension, which reduces data usage and speeds up browsing. Edge is a real POS that should never have been released when it was. Edge being the default browser on Windows 10 is what helped Chrome become the most widely used desktop browser. Microsoft will do and say whatever they can to try to win people back to the MS browser camp. No thanks.
  • Edge saves power on a few benchmarks but not across the board. Throwing out an arbitrary number of "x" percent could be saved by switching will confuse all the family members that call, asking if they should switch. On the other end, Windows 10 is their own product. They can kind of do whatever they want, and we can decide if we use them or not.
    • Has anyone seen what happens if you're not using a battery? Like on a desktop? Maybe Windows hits you with carbon footprint statistics? You could slow the melting of the icecaps if you'd just suck up and use Edge.

  • ...is looking better and better every day. I still need to take some time to figure out how to stop the annoying upgrade warnings on Win 7.
  • Laughable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:17PM (#52543229)
    It's laughable that they claim to care about the battery now. If they really cared, they'd let me shut down my fucking laptop without installing updates.

    Hey Microsoft! I don't always have time or battery power to sit around waiting for updates to install!
    • windows update says "don't turn off the computer"

      Know what I do...?

      I turn off my fucking computer. Every time.

      This has only b0rked windows on me twice, in 15 years of doing it.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I know, on my own system on my own time I definitely do this.

        But when I'm on site with a client's system and I have to make the judgement call: screw the OS and waste the afternoon rebuilding/restoring, or wait out the upgrades, it's a tough decision. Last one I did was a 90 minute fucking wait. Screw that.

      • This has only b0rked windows on me twice, in 15 years of doing it.

        You should probably find a more efficient way of b0rking Windows -- you'll be much happier. A hammer should do it.

    • Just do a restart instead of a shutdown. Then hard power off the system at the moment of the reboot. This is easier done on desktop, else you'll have to remove the battery - because on a modern system, you won't have 7 seconds to shut it down with the power button before Windows is half-booted again.

  • Wasn't Google Chrome (the browser) meant to introduce a sleep mode to background tabs? Does anyone know whether that was introduced or whether I am confusing the browser product?

    At the same time Google Chrome often shows up as 'using significant energy' on my MacBook Air, under MacOS 10.11.5. Has anyone done any profiling to see what aspect of Google Chrome is consuming the CPU? BTW I am one of those tab hoarders, but apparently not as bad as some.

    • While I didn't find the news article I thought I had read, I did find the Chrome extension 'The Great Suspender', which indicates it 'Automatically suspends unused tabs to free up system resources'. Just installed it in the hope it actually helps - BTW I have no involvement in the creation of this extension, but it does appear to be open source: https://github.com/deanoemcke/... [github.com]

    • Chrome will automatically unload the contents of tabs you can't see in low memory conditions. It also drastically reduces the firing rate of JavaScript timers and intervals on such tabs all the time when they are not visible. I think it might even freeze them now unless they are playing audio, not sure.
  • is there (Score:4, Interesting)

    by desdinova 216 ( 2000908 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @03:40PM (#52543393)
    an ad blocker for edge. last time I tried it they didn't have any ad blocker (please no host file APK spam) I refuse to run a browser without ad blocking because of malware.
    • Re:is there (Score:4, Informative)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @05:24PM (#52544131)

      an ad blocker for edge. last time I tried it they didn't have any ad blocker (please no host file APK spam) I refuse to run a browser without ad blocking because of malware.

      Yes, the ad blockers so far released for Edge are "Adblock" and "Adblock Plus"
      https://www.engadget.com/2016/... [engadget.com]

      They're for the anniversary update, currently available on the insiders program, due for general release on August 2nd.

  • Where's the warning that says using Edge (and/or IE) drains my will to live?
  • Headline should be: "Maker Of Edge Browser Says Don't Use Those Other Browsers"

  • Google, Yahoo and Apple should pop up similar bubbles on their websites, truthfully warning about everything wrong with Windows 10 and recommending alternatives.

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