It goes something like this: “MobileMark®07 is the one everyone uses and it shows how long the battery will last at idle. I understand that’s not the battery life I’ll experience when actually using the system, but isn’t it useful to show how long it will stay on?”

Is that how we want to show a PC’s battery life – while it is effectively doing nothing? It does allow you to say, “Hey, if I do nothing with it, it will last all day!”

But that’s as useful as the answer to these questions:

• How long does your cell phone last if you never make a call?
• How much memory do you need on a DVR if you never record anything?
• How many messages can I get on my answer-phone if no one calls?
• How much music can my iPod hold if I don’t download anything?
• How many miles to the gallon do you get when your car is sitting in your driveway?

Answer: It really doesn’t matter.

Isn’t the point of a phone to make and receive calls, a DVR to record TV and a car to get you places? Surely the point of a PC is to do some, well, personal computing.

What do we call a PC that does nothing all day? A battery soak. (Guess that’s not as sexy.)

That’s why we have suggested two battery metrics: active and resting (or idle). Next time I buy a PC this is what I would like to see:

Wouldn’t that be a more helpful guide?

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

It has been interesting to watch the reaction to my recent blog on battery life (if you haven’t yet read that, I suggest you do before proceeding – click here).

 Generally the feedback falls into three groups:

·         Those who support our position;

·         Those who don’t see the need for a change; and

·         Those who agree with the premise but not the proposed solution.

I thought it would be useful to review the discussion and I’d also like to say a little more about what we plan to do next.

The Support Group

It has been very interesting to see how much discussion one blog has created.

My favorite response, not surprisingly, was Darren Murph of Engadget, who suggested that the market should, “… give a serious high five to senior VP and CMO Nigel Dessau on this one.” Thanks – not many of those, so I will take them where I can.

Darren like others also commented on the difference between the MobileMark® 07 (MMO7) and 3DMark06 approaches. As Ed Hansberry from InformationWeek reported, “the tests that AMD is proposing show numbers 42% to 64% lower than current tests show, but at least the tests are closer to simulating real-life usage.”

And this from TechSpot’s Justin Mann, “Dessau calls for a change in industry standards, including ones found in programs like 3DMark06, to give better estimates on battery life. It’s an interesting blog post, and I imagine he’s only one of many in the industry who can recognize the battery meter folly for what it really is.”

On involving consumers, Nedim Hadzic from Fudzilla noted, “While we’re sure that this trend will never stop as it almost goes without saying in the world of marketing, it certainly would be nice if consumers had a say in it for once, as it’s their cash that keeps the industry alive.”

Other asked why we were even bringing this subject up. Shawn Oliver on Hot Hardware explained that no one believes the battery numbers today anyway. He wrote, “[At 6.5 hours] we were just happy that the 1000HE came that close to meeting the ridiculous sounding claim of 9.5 hours, but Mr. Dessau doesn’t think that’s the best way to go about things. And truthfully, now that our eyes have been opened, neither do we.”

In a comment to my blog, John Clifford summed it up well, “I really hope the manufacturers of notebooks and cellphones will start getting more real and transparent about battery life.”

You can read more on the discussion on Icrontic; Cliff Forster is leveraging the community to encourage a “collective effort” to address “the myth of laptop battery life.”

No Need for Change

Given that high-tech is an industry about change, I found it ironic that some suggested there was no reason to change.  Yet, some seem happy with the status quo.

Vijay commented that MM07 used in several independent reviews is, “a hell (of a) lot better than any of those battery life claims made on the notebooks by the manufacturers.”  I think this misses the point as MM07 is not done the same way by each manufacturer even though it is typically what manufactures cite ― and that’s just confusing. 

And I did point out that we weren’t suggesting MM07 is not a useful benchmark.

William Maher of PC Authority wrote, “Nigel, we admire your efforts, but the real problem is getting the industry to adopt a more accurate method. AMD can talk all it likes about 3DMark, but until the notebooks manufacturers all agree on a better system, then we’ll still see misleading numbers.” I’m hoping this doesn’t suggest we should just give up.

On the subject of giving up, our competitor’s stated response to our suggestion that the industry needed to embrace a discussion about this issue was, “the best way to determine how to measure battery life is by making proposals and debating it in industry consortiums and not via blog post.” Noteworthy: this was first reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Don Clark in ― yes ― his blog.  It seemed to rub a few reporters (and readers) the wrong way.

Murph on Engadget blogged, “Oh Intel, could you possibly be any more corporate?” While Sylvie Barak of The Inquirer (am I quoting the Inquirer?) snapped back, “Does this imply Intel is suggesting we completely ignore corporate blogs? … Should we ignore Intel blogs from now on?” While Barak notes that without Intel coming to the table to discuss the issue there likely won’t be much traction, she does note, “a sit down for open discussion would certainly be a good thing.”

On Twitter, @IntelNick suggested we work through BAPCo. We do of course work with BAPCo but we also know, which @IntelNick undoubtedly also knows, that BAPCo is chaired by Intel and the group unfortunately does not seem in hurry to make any policy changes related to battery life information.

With all due respect, I submit that my blog did more to move the needle than BAPCo has in some time.

Right Idea, Wrong Benchmark

Many of those who posted comments to my blog expressed general support for the idea while exploring the question of what other factors should be included when measuring battery life. For example, John McElhenney commented that, “In terms of reporting battery performance, doesn’t some of the problem originate with the battery itself?” Snappy commented that it would be, “meaningful to show suspend battery life.”

And there was misunderstanding as to why we chose 3DMark06. Some lost sight of the fact that 3DMark06 highly utilizes the processor in a repeatable way (which MM07 does not), and instead focused on the fact that 3DMark06 is a graphics performance metric. For example, Jimmy Tang commented, “I think the idea of using 3DMark06 is only addressing a tiny aspect of battery life, and that is gaming. We all know very well that when you run the machine with full 3D graphics, you’re only going to load the GPU.”

But our intent was to drive toward a model that emphasizes utilization of the system – we believe the industry needs something that drives the systems more than 5% (which is what MM07 does).

Others wanted a broader rage of metrics. Bryan Bartow posted a comment suggesting a more flexible approach would be good and that he would, “love to see a suite of benchmarking apps that emulate several different typical usage profiles. For example, Home, Work and Play.”

In the end many echoed Cliff Forster who suggested, “Surely, an independent organization to test battery claims can not be too far off.”

So, What’s Next?

We are working with a number of our OEM partners to get their views and further encourage the discussion. Like Cliff Forster, we believe that there is a role for an independent organization, and we hope that could be BAPCo. I will keep you up to date with how that is going.

Also you can ask BAPCo yourself – visit their website here; I am sure John Peterson the BAPCo Operations Manager would love to hear from you. J

At the end of the day, our aim is to support consumers in the most transparent way. Ed Hansberry at InformationWeek for one hopes we succeed and that we make, “some progress getting other manufacturers to use more reliable battery tests for mobile computers and that the cell phone industry will take note and give us better tests for modern smartphones that more closely mimic their real-world usage patterns.”

As I said earlier, high-tech is about change and progress, and this too will pass. As pepoluan suggests in a comment on my blog, “I personally look forward to the day when fully-charging a laptop’s battery takes no more than 1 minute.”

Amen to that.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

I think we all accept the idea that there is not one answer to the question, “how many miles to the gallon?” We understand you need to ask whether the reference is to city or highway miles.  As a member of my team puts it, there are “guard-rails” between which we know our cars operate.

In the same vein, I think we are talking about battery life all wrong. In our discussions at AMD and our messaging on the subject, we’re going about it in the wrong way.  And we’re not alone – see Rob Enderle’s thoughts on the matter here.

Have you experienced a difference between your devices’ actual battery life relative to what the manufacturer tells you to expect?  I thought so.

I find people often ask what my battery life is on my 3G iPhone, and I tell them I don’t know because I always try and keep it charged. If you ask Apple they will tell you the 3G model has 300 hours of standby time but only about 5 hours of talk time – and less it you activate Wi-Fi, GPS or other features.

Given this, it’s interesting to look at how PCs are rated on battery life. Typically you only get one number ― and most people have no idea what that number really means in terms of how they will actually use the device: is it city or highway, talk-time or standby? More to the point: does this number represent the PC’s battery life with the machine in use, or sitting idle?

Most PC battery time metrics are achieved by looking at how long the battery lasted running a benchmark called MobileMark® 2007 (MMO7). This is a rating of battery life when your PC is running on average less than 5% utilized – or fundamentally idle. Most PC makers don’t even turn Wi-Fi on for this test. Is this realistic based on how you use your PC?

Like highway or standby – most MM07-based battery numbers are the “best case scenarios” in which your machine is doing nothing. Not that the MM07 benchmark isn’t useful; it’s just that it only tells part of the story. It’s just one guard-rail ― shouldn’t there be another? 

If I want to know how long my battery is going to last, I want to know how long it’s going to last with me using it, not with it idle or doing nothing.

For this reason, we propose that the industry needs another test to measure battery life, and we would like to propose adoption of the industry-standard 3DMark06 benchmark. The reason I like the sound of 3DMark06 is that it uses more graphics, it runs on Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista, and, most importantly, it runs the machine at a higher overall system utilization than other industry-standard benchmarks.

I asked my team to dig a bit on this and we decided to test some PCs with both MM07 and 3DMark06 and see what the results would be. See the table below with some of the relevant test details. AMD’s Hal Speed is also posting a blog to show you what the test scripts were so you can do this for yourself.

	OEM System Comparison #1		OEM System Comparison #2		OEM System Comparison #3
Processor	AMD Turion™ X2 Ultra Dual-Core Processor	Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor	AMD Turion™ X2 Ultra Dual-Core Processor	Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor	AMD Turion™ X2 Dual-Core Processor	Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor
Processor Sku	ZM-82	P8400	ZM-82	P8400	RM-72	P7350
Battery Size	55Whr	55Whr	43Whr	43Whr	55Whr	55Whr
Graphics	ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3200	Intel® GMA 4500M	ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3450	NVIDIA GeForce™ 9600M GT	ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3200	Intel® GMA 4500M
3DMark 06*	92	91	59	53	91	97
MobileMark 2007 (Productivity)*	169	206	103	148	210	167

*numbers represent battery life in minutes

As you can see, on similar machines, while the typical idle metric on one machine shows that we may have an underperforming system, when that machine is in use it achieves similar if not identical battery life.

Are we suggesting people should abandon the MM07 idle metric for the 3DMark06 busy metric? Actually: no. Like talk and standby or city and highway, we think both should be cited to provide the buyer with a more informed purchasing process.  Perhaps next time we test using MMO7 we’ll enable Wi-Fi to make it a more realistic, “active,” reading.

In any event, when we talk about battery life in the future, we intend to give both MMO7 and 3DMark06 — and we hope others will follow suit.

Now the cynics and the wiser-than-thou will tell you that we are only doing this because our idle battery life is not as good or that we should use something other than 3DMark06. To them I say:  Let’s engage in a discussion, and if you find a better test on “active” use than 3DMark06, we would love to discuss it with you!  Let’s work together.

The issue is we are not being entirely honest with users about what PC battery life they can expect to actually experience.  Shouldn’t we, as an industry, try and fix that?

We think so.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.