If you’re using a Windows laptop and have been scratching your head wondering why the battery life is so lousy, it turns out there could be a reason for it – and it has nothing to do with Microsoft or the company that made your computer. As it turns out, there’s a long-standing bug in Google’s Chrome browser that’s been sapping juice away for years.

The bug seems to be the cause of a mysterious power-drain that numerous Windows laptop users have reported. But while these people will presumably be pleased that it’s been discovered, they’ll be less than chuffed to learn that Google knew about it for almost two years and has only just decided to try and fix it now.

According to this reort, the bug relates to how Google Chrome tells Windows machines to manage processor idle time. When your laptop is left idle, the CPU falls asleep so it can save power, only waking up at certain intervals in case there are some events that need handling. Windows normally performs these checks every 15.625ms, but it’s possible to adjust this interval, and that’s exactly what Chrome has been doing.

Rather than wake up the processor ever 15.625ms, Chrome kicks it into gear every 1ms. Which means that your processor wakes up 1,000 times per second when Chrome is running, as opposed to the 64 times a second it wakes up when it’s not. The bad news is that this can happen even if you close Chrome. That’s because there’s only one platform timer, and once Chrome has been started it changes it’s resolution, meaning the new value becomes active system-wide.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if your CPU never gets any rest, it’s going to lead to some serious battery drain.

Sadly, it seems that Google knew about this problem for some time. Yet despite repeated complaints documented in Chrome’s bug tracker database, it failed to take any action to fix the issue. Now though, it’s been shamed into action following an article in Forbes which brought the long-lingering bug to everyone’s attention – shortly after the article was posted, Google announced it was looking into a fix.

That’s not to say it’s been fixed yet, and its not clear when a patch might be issued. Windows users can keep an eye out for news on Google’s Chrome Releases blog if they’re concerned. In the meantime, they might want to try not using Chrome and see if that makes any difference to their battery life. As for Linux and Apple Mac users, apparently they’re not affected by this bug.

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc