04.05.11
More Bogus Benchmarks From Microsoft
Summary: Microsoft is up to no good again, this time with Internet Explorer 9 ‘benchmarks’
THE previous post contained an example of Microsoft’s fake GNU/Linux benchmarks — a subject we wrote a lot about over the years. Microsoft nearly got sued for it and benchmark fraud also surrounded Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft just doesn’t know how to make the case that Internet Explorer 9 performs better than the rivals (which it does not). According to this, Microsoft’s “lab tests” (or labs Microsoft pays to generate some lies) are being “used as advertising”. To quote:
Instead of producing less bloatware to run on PCs or using software that runs on ARM, they orchestrated a test of the effect of several browsers on power consumption. When I look at the report it is obvious they did not monitor power consumption with real users using the systems in real scenarios but several specific benchmarks of peak power consumption in specific situation. In the real world browsers idle…
Here I am with 15 tabs open in Chrome:
load average: 0.00, 0.05, 0.07
Cpu(s):5.6%
and lots more going on.So, the lab tests are irrelevant for real world situations. They might be relevant for video but not for reading and looking at pictures or typing.
Tests can be constructed to show just about anything, selling the false claim of one thing being “better” than another. Microsoft has done this many times, so it is the boy who cried “Wolf” really. In other news about Internet Explorer 9, it has a privacy hole. To quote The Register: “A hole has been spotted in Internet Explorer 9′s do-not-track technology, and Microsoft says it’s a feature not a bug.
“In response to a US government call for greater protection of consumers’ privacy online, Microsoft added a Tracking Protection Lists (TPLs) feature to IE9. Netizens can use one or more lists to prevent certain ad networks and websites from tracking their behavior online. But when an IE9 user downloads multiple TPLs and a site’s blocked on one list but allowed on another, IE9 will allow the site, letting it to track the user’s activities.”
So here we are in 2011 and Microsoft still pretends privacy does not matter. Is anybody surprised by this given that Microsoft promotes surveillance? █
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twitter said,
April 5, 2011 at 5:37 pm
GNU/Linux users are blissfully unaware of this but IE does not idle in the real world. GNU/Linux users might think of the one or two things that might crawl through adblock are distracting. If they have been foolish enough to install Flash, some dancing ads might get in the way. People with more motivation than a slug might be perturbed and notice a small performance hit. Sometimes flash locks up, but that’s what happens with non free software. These are nothing next to Windows and IE is the worst. IE opens itself up to an obnoxious train of flash, activeX and complete privacy violation. If you used Windows ten years ago, you might remember the Banzai Buddy [a more earthy description]. Banzi is tame next to the junk that literally jumps out of IE these days. Just watch someone try to surf with IE some time and you will see what I mean. Microsoft is really shameless to pretend real life IE use is anything but awful.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
April 5th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Microsoft’s benchmarks are also performed on Windows, which Microsoft controls. See Comes vs Microsoft exhibits on how Microsoft deliberately penalised the competition (poor performance) in Windows.