Seeing as most of the time spent on a laptop is spent online, AnandTech ran exhuastive tests on Windows machines, Intel and AMD, netbook and notebook, to see if switching browsers makes any difference in battery life. And hey, it does! In some tests, there was a 30% advantage between the worst browser—always Safari—and the best—Internet Explorer 8. Seriously.

In fact, Microsoft's browser came in front across the board, even inching out Firefox with Adblock by a few percent. It's hard to say why IE8 is so power-thrifty, but the most processor-intensive operations a browser does outside of running Flash content are in rendering Javascript, which IE8 kind of sucks at. So, mystery solved, maybe! Firefox, Chrome and to a lesser extent Opera held up fine, but depending on what kind of laptop you're running, and how willing you are to ditch your browser, there are quite a few sweet battery minutes up for grabs here. Full breakdown at [AnandTech]

Or, if you want the quick and dirty, here's what unfurled in front of me, give or take a few guest presenters and some marketingspeak:

Ballmer comes out—my guess is he's smiling. He talks about the wonderful world of consumer electronics. He mentions this company called Microsoft. He also mentions the tough economic times we're all going to suffer through together. He will be optimistic, however.

He's going to talk about Windows 7. First, he'll announce the availability the Windows 7 Beta tomorrow for registered Microsoft beta peeps, January 9th for everybody else. He'll run through a lot of stuff we've already seen on Win 7, like DeviceStage, Homegroup networking, "Play To..." and other coolness like the Win 7 touch interface.

On the Windows Live front, he'll tell us that Windows Live Essentials is no longer in beta, and that you can now post photos on Facebook directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery, and save photos from Facebook directly to your Win gallery too. He'll also say that Windows Live Search and Essentials toolbar is gonna boot Google from Dell computers in February. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless is going to implement Windows Live on VZW feature phones. IE8 is not out of beta yet, but it's coming.

For Windows Mobile, the big news, as presumed, will be full Adobe Flash support in the browser. (Sounds good to me, if only the browser was as good as, well, others.)

Ballmer is going to call Robbie Bach to the stage to talk about connected entertainment. Bach will start with some good Xbox stats—28 million worldwide, with 17 million active Windows Live members, and over a billion dollars spent on the service since inception.

Bach will introduce a number of sweet products:
• Windows Mobile app for managing Netflix queue
• Xbox Live community game builder called Kodu (already buzzed about)
• Windows Media Extender functionality in Toshiba products (announced earlier today)
• The latest edition of Ford Sync, which you can read about here
• Go back and forth on shows you didn't pre-record using Microsoft Media Room Anytime (I wonder what the advertiser stipulations are on that)
• Already known games Halo Wars and Halo 3: Orbital Drop Shock Trooper
• Xbox Live Primetime game 1 Vs 100 live gameshow coming in spring

What, no love for Zune? Almost everything's going according to plan so far, but stay tuned, because anything could happen. You know, come to think of it, Robbie Bach got to talk about a lot of the fun stuff. Is this the kickoff of the Ballmer Years? Or is it really the kickoff to the Bach Years? Steve would probably win at arm wrestling, but seeing the two of them on stage, I'm starting to think Bach could maybe take the bossman in a Cool Hand Luke-style a fist fight. [Full CES 2009 Coverage]

This IE 8 release candidate is said to be feauture complete, which is to say that we should expect anything significant to be added before the final version ships. Most of what we were expecting is still present, and refined: the porn mo—err, InPrivate, a refreshed interface, stronger find functions, full keyboard navigation and adaptive zoom. Not present, however, are significant increases in Javascript rendering speed or CSS compatibility, areas in which even this mature version of IE 8 was handily beaten by current Firefox and Chrome builds.

Still, the browser looks to be a solid step forward, and despite the one-step-behind spec sheet, aging code base, and TGDaily's convincing assertion that IE 8 won't be able to slow the erosion of Microsoft's browser market share, will provide welcome improvements for that giant, stubborn chunk of the population that just uses whatever their eMachine shipped with. [TGDaily]

To be fair, IE8 is still in beta, which means it isn't the full release and isn't finished yet. But since it's already at the second public beta stage, one would think it'd be at least pretty close to being complete, and it'd doubtful that such drastic changes as would be necessary to cut those numbers down will come before the full release hits.

These numbers line up with the speed tests that our cousins over at Lifehacker performed (which also included Chrome). Will Microsoft rein in IE8's bloat before its full release? If not, will that push more people to Firefox and Chrome? We'll see. [Exo.blog via Digital Daily]

The IE 8 Beta 2 release should be hitting any day now, so we shall see soon enough whether or not this feature made it into the build. But, the question is, would private browsing make IE more appealing to you, or is it a non-issue? [istartedsomething via ZDNet Image via ninamariebarbuto]