AMD: Lobbying for a New Battery-Life Metric for Laptops
Patrick Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), is a prolific blogger and tweeter about issues of concern to the chip maker. One of his biggest pet peeves is how battery life is measured in laptops, a topic that he thinks is going to become very hot.
How hot? Well, Moorhead predicts that if the industry doesn’t come up with better ways to give consumers realistic estimates of battery life, the issue will be forced in one of two other ways: class-action suits will be brought on behalf of consumers, or an agency like the Federal Trade Commission will intervene. (Not that he is aware of either kind of action taking place yet, he hastens to add).
At a briefing Monday in San Francisco, Moorhead pulls out a bunch of advertising circulars from retailers, which include estimates of battery life for laptops that he contends are hopelessly unrealistic.