This is a story of truth, greed and the American Way.
Oh, and also laptop battery-life benchmarks.
Two things about battery-life measurements for laptops: First, they usually bear little relationship to reality. I don’t know about you, but my “five-hour??? battery often dies halfway between J.F.K. and LAX.
This is important, because battery life has become a huge selling point. People have finally managed to unlearn the Megahertz Myth (hallelujah!), so they’re looking at battery life as a crucial buying factor.
Why doesn’t the computer industry invent a standard battery test?
Actually, they have. Those “up to??? numbers are the results of a test suite called MobileMark 2007.
There are a few problems with the MobileMark test. One of them is the identity of its inventor. It’s Bapco (Business Application Performance Corporation), a trade group led by Intel and composed primarily of laptop and chip manufacturers.
The MobileMark test, furthermore, doesn’t specify whether battery-eating features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are turned on during testing. That decision is left up to the manufacturers when they test their own laptops. Hmm, wonder what they usually decide?
