If you're running Windows 7 or earlier on a laptop and you use Google Chrome as your Web browser, your battery is being unnecessarily drained. The reason Chrome has been killing battery life and slowing down laptop performance is that it forces the Windows system clock tick rate to 1 millisecond, where the default is 15.625ms. This is the frequency at which the processor responds to requests from programs. Internet Explorer, by contrast, only increases the tick rate if the browser is engaged in constant activity such as streaming video. Chrome ups the rate even if it's just showing a blank page. The bug has been elevated to priority 1 on the Chromium project site, indicating that its resolution is a requirement before the next version of the browser can be released to the public.
Windows 8 users aren't affected by the issue,With Windows 8 and later, the problem no longer exists, and thanks to a recent report in Forbes. This is because that newer operating system, like Mac OS X and Linux, dispenses with the clock tick strategy, instead allowing the CPU to run at a low-power mode until called upon.
Google itself has finally committed to fixing the issue, which it has known about for six years. So if you run Windows and need your battery to last, you have a few options:
- Use another browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer (since Opera now shares all of Chrome's underlying code, switching to that won't help)
- Upgrade to Windows 8.1
- wait for the next version of Chrome to be released.
No comments