Watching 4K movies on your laptop, while unplugged? Microsoft Movies & TV, the default video player that comes with Windows 10, lasts over twice as long as the competition.
You might think of VLC and Media Player Classic as the lightweight alternatives to Microsoft’s bloated default offering, but that thinking seems outdated. Microsoft Movies & TV utterly destroyed the free competition in battery life in a series of tests run by PC World Executive Editor Gordon Mah Ung.
“Most people ‘in the know’ skip the default options for their video player of choice because it’s ‘better’ or more ‘efficient’,” wrote Mah Ung. “My results disprove this from a battery-life aspect.”
The test was simple. A 4K video, Tears of Steel, was played on a brand new Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 running Windows 10. Brightness was set manually, and airplane mode was turned on, but beyond that everything was left at the default settings. The video was looped in several different players until the battery died, and the results were surprising.
Microsoft’s Movies & TV lasted 314 minutes, over twice as long as the closest competition, Media Player Classic HC. VLC, long loved by users for being lightweight, offered the worst results of all.
“I’m a huge VLC fan and out of pure laziness, download VLC on my machines and never venture further,” wrote Mah Ung. “So it was a bummer to see my favorite media player perform so poorly in battery performance.”
Apple’s QuickTime 7, long forced on users installing iTunes, couldn’t even open the file.
“It seems odd that Apple would hurl stones at Adobe while sitting inside of a house made of shimmering non-Gorilla Glass,” wrote Mah Ung.
Apple hasn’t done a lot to update that software for Windows, but it’s still noteworthy considering how much time and energy Cupertino spent pushing the Windows version.
The real story, though, is how efficient Microsoft’s video player is. If you’ve been avoiding default players because of how bloated Windows Media Player was in older versions of Windows, it might be time for a re-think.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.