One of the cool features introduced by Microsoft in Internet Explorer is the ability to save battery time while browsing the web. This article will show how this is done and share a rough estimate about the performance impact this has on your browsing experience.

Set Internet Explorer to Save Power While Running on Battery

If you have Internet Explorer 9 (and above) installed, you can customize it to save power if you are browsing the web while running on battery. This can be done by editing the advanced settings of your active power plan.

You will find a section called Internet Explorer. If you expand it, you will find the "JavaScript Timer Frequency" which can be set to offer "Maximum Performance" or "Maximum Power Savings".

Edit your active power plan and set it to offer "Maximum Power Savings" when running on battery. To learn more about editing power plans, check out this tutorial: How to Tweak the Advanced Settings of a Power Plan in Windows 7.

The Performance Impact on Browsing

One question that bugged me while using this setting was: what is the performance impact? Is it going to ruin the web browsing experience I have in Internet Explorer?

To answer it, I chose to run the Peacekeeper browser benchmark. I ran it three times while running Internet Explorer with the "Maximum Performance" setting and calculated the average score. It was 1363!

Then, I ran it three times with "Maximum Power Savings" enabled and the average score was 1228. This means a 10% decrease in browsing performance.

Conclusion

10% lower performance is not a big impact on your browsing experience, especially if it means saving a bit more battery juice. Configuring this Internet Explorer power saving setting for your active power plan, can help in getting a decent trade-off between the speed of browsing the Internet and battery time.

Unfortunately I could not measure the actual impact of this setting on power consumption, to see how effective it is, in real numbers. If you have any ideas on how to measure things, don’t hesitate to share via the comments form below.

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