Google Chrome Sucks The Life Out Of Your Laptop Battery

If you are using Google Chrome in Microsoft Windows you are really putting a hurt on your laptop battery.

Ian Morris, a contributor to Forbes, explained how the web browser can suck the life out of a laptop battery at a rate unlike any other. Others have noticed this as well.

"The problem is down to something called the 'system clock tick rate.' This is something that Windows uses internally that you won't hear about unless you go looking," he said.

As soon as Chrome is opened, the clock tick rate is immediately set to 1.000ms, regardless of user activity. A normal rate for an idle browser in Windows should be 15.625ms, according to Morris.

So what do those numbers mean anyways?

In an OS like Windows, events are often set to run at intervals. To save power, the processor sleeps when nothing needs attention, and wakes at predefined intervals. This interval is what Chrome adjusts in Windows, so reducing it to 1.000ms means that the system is waking far more often than at 15.625ms. In fact, at 1.000ms the processor is waking 1000 times per second. The default, of 15.625ms means the processor wakes just 64 times per second to check on events that need attention. 

The differnce could mean 25 percent more power used, which isn't a huge issue in terms of cost, but it's a significant one pertaining to battery life.

"It's also a problem because, by its very nature, the system tick rate is global, meaning that one application is able to spoil everything, and because regular users don't care about tick rates, most of us would never know this was a problem," said Morris.

He even tested the difference in power consumption before writing the article and it proved true.

The good news is that many people don't have to worry about this, even if they are using the Chrome web browser.

Macs and Linux machines do not encounter this issue because they have what are called "tickless timers."

The bad news is if you're a Chrome user on a Windows laptop, there isn't much you can do. The problem was first identified and brought up in 2010 but nothing has been done to fix it. 

"I found out about this bug a long time ago, and it's been raised with Google via its Chromium bug tracker for a long time," Morris said. "It has, for the most part, been ignored."

Unless you are married to Chrome, you can simply switch to using either the Firefox or Internet Explorer web browsers instead.

Design & Trend isn't sure when, but Morris added and update (good news!) to his article which is below:

UPDATE: I've made a slight addition to this article to clarify what's happening and what the problem is. Google has also assigned this bug internally now, so it is getting some attention. For that reason, the bug is locked for new comments. It should still be possible to "star" it though, and thus vote for its resolution.