Last week I presented you with some facts, thoughts and opinions about notebook screen brightness settings required in the industry’s de-facto standard battery life benchmark, MobileMark 2007 (MM07). Now I would like to explore how closely MM07’s application selection and activity distribution reflects consumer usage and purchase patterns. Like that last blog, I will provide you the facts and let you decide.

As a reminder, MobileMark 2007 is now being advertised and merchandised in retail circulars across the US. This benchmark is developed by the Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCO).  (More background and our suggestions for more accurate battery life metrics can be found here, here, and here.)

Applications in MMO7 compared to consumer use

In my opinion, it is not credible to construct a consumer benchmark consisting primarily of applications that business people use. To demonstrate my point, take a look at the battery life benchmark applications now being used in consumer adverts.

These benchmarked applications inside MM07 include: Microsoft Project 2003 for project management, Microsoft Excel 2003 for calculation sheets, Microsoft Outlook 2003 for email, calendar and scheduling, Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 for presentations, Microsoft Word 2003 for word processing, WinZip Computing WinZip 10.0 for archive compression, Adobe Photoshop CS2 for manipulating and compressing images, Adobe Illustrator CS2 for manipulating images and Adobe Flash 8 for vector graphics and animation.

Do these look like your most commonly used consumer PC applications to you?  Here’s my personal list of most commonly used consumer applications as a starting point:

• Web browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Chrome or Internet Explorer. And with browsers come Google, Gmail, YouTube, Hulu, ESPN.com, Disney.com, etc.
• Music apps like iTunes or Windows Media player
• Video or movie playback for DVDs, Blu-ray or iTunes movies or TV shows
• Games like Spore, Sims, and Worlds of Warcraft

Like I said, you be the judge.

Application % weightings in MM07 compared to usage patterns

Even if we pretend for a moment that consumers don’t use web browsers, listen to music, watch videos or play games, and they primarily use the listed MM07 apps. Surely someone on the planet does that, right?

BAPCO has published MM07’s “distribution of measured application task times“, or in other words the apps the tested notebook was running 5-10% of the time when it wasn’t idling or resting 95-90% of the time.

Inside MM07, The “measured application task times” for Adobe Flash Creation is 33.6%, Adobe Photoshop CS2 is 21.8%, Adobe Illustrator CS2 is 16.7%, Microsoft Excel is 16.6%, WinZip 10.0 is 7.1%, Microsoft Word is 1.1%, Microsoft PowerPoint is 1.0%, Microsoft Project is 1.2% and Microsoft Outlook is 1.0%.

I ask, when you use your notebook, do you spend 72% of your time recoding Flash videos, manipulating and compressing pictures in Photoshop and Illustrator?   I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that that is not an accurate reflection of most of our usage profiles!

MM07 Applications compared to retail notebook software loads

One final aspect I would like to examine is the software preloaded on retail notebooks compared to the MM07 load. I also looked up the potential costs associated with a consumer adopting the MM07 software load if they bought it on their own.

I took what looked like popular notebooks and those which advertised battery life and compared their software load with MM07’s software load. I looked at five notebooks advertised in major Sunday circulars last weekend and here is what I found.

Granted this is a pretty limited sample, but as you can see above, there was 0% correlation between the MM07 software load and what is installed on these notebooks. Note: SKUs #1 and #2 did have a 60 day edition of MS Office Pro⁽¹⁾.  SKUs #3, 4, and 5 came with 60 day edition of MS Office Student Edition⁽²⁾.  Close but no cigar.

I then looked at what it would cost a consumer to buy the latest and greatest MM07 updated apps.  Here is what it could cost at retail:

As you can see above, it would cost the consumer approximately $2,701 at retail to load all of the updated MM07 applications.

Conclusion

My goal was to compare MobileMark 2007 (MM07) application selection and activity distribution and compare that to a consumer’s behavior. I showed the following:

1) MM07 Productivity is utilized in consumer facing advertisements to indicate comparative notebook battery life.
2) MM07 Productivity tested applications do not contain a single web browser, music app, video playback app, or game.
3) 72% of MM07’s application usage comes from Flash video encoding and photo manipulation and compression in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
4) MM07 tested applications have a 0% correlation between what is pre-loaded on retail notebooks and are six years old on average. (Yes, I admit it was a small sample, but you get my point…)
5) If a user bought software representing the MM07 test suite, it could cost $2,701 at retail.

I ask you, do MM07 applications represent real world consumer usage behavior and purchase characteristics?  You be the judge.

Notes:

⁽¹⁾ loaded w/MS Works (word processor, spreadsheet, calendar) & 60-day trial of MS Office Pro2007 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher)

⁽²⁾ loaded w/MS Works (word processor, spreadsheet, calendar) & 60-day trial of MS Office 2007 Home & Student Edition (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote)

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing 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 linked sites and no endorsement is implied.