Author Archives: Eric Hale

How do you say that?

on November 10, 2016

I recently saw this video, and heard something that I had never imagined: “Next we tested with what I assume is pronounced web-export.” I’ve had people ask if it was an acronym, but I ‘ve never heard it pronounced “export.”

How do we pronounce XPRT? The same way we pronounce “expert.” So, it’s “Benchmark expert,” “Web expert,” “Touch expert,” and so on. CrXPRT is pronounced “C‑R expert” and HDXPRT is pronounced “H‑D‑expert.”

When I was working in Australia, I got teased about my accent quite a bit, and my case-hardened American R was a particular target. So, when I say the letters out loud, is comes out something like “eks‑pee‑arrr‑tee,” (arrr like a pirate would say it) and “expert” is the closest match. This is true for most Americans. However, in many other accents, it’s more like “eks‑pee‑ah‑tee,” and “ex-paht” is much closer to “export.”

Yes, I think way too much about this stuff.

Eric

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, CrXPRT, HDXPRT, MobileXPRT, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT |

Taking a detour

By Eric Hale

on October 13, 2016

Back in April, Bill announced that we would be starting development of a cross-platform benchmark. This announcement generated a lot of interest and we got lots of good feedback and ideas.

We knew from the start that getting a cross-platform benchmark right would be hard. However, it proved to be even trickier than we thought. As I explained before, benchmarks not only have to run well, but the results must be fair to all platforms involved. Achieving both of these requirements has been a challenge.

At the same time we’ve been devoting a great deal of effort and resources to the cross-platform benchmark, some increasingly popular new use cases have been receiving less attention than they deserve. We’ve decided that the cross-platform benchmark is not the best use of the Community’s resources, and are going to put it on the shelf for a while. This will free up the resources to let us really dig into some newer technologies.

Thanks again to everyone who responded.

Eric

Posted in Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Cross-platform benchmarks |

WebXPRT delivers over 100,000 real-world results

By Eric Hale

on October 5, 2016

DURHAM, NC–(Marketwired – October 05, 2016) – Today, Principled Technologies (PT) announced that the popular WebXPRT tool recently crossed a milestone of 100,000 total runs.

WebXPRT lets users everywhere compare the performance of any web-enabled device—from iPad tablets to Android phones to Windows computers. Manufacturers, developers, consumers, and media outlets in more than 358 cities and 57 countries have used WebXPRT’s easy-to-understand results to compare how well different devices handle everyday tasks.

WebXPRT is available to the public for free and runs in almost any browser. To read more about WebXPRT and run the test, visit WebXPRT.com.

WebXPRT is part of the BenchmarkXPRT family of benchmarks (the XPRTs), a set of apps designed to help test how well devices handle everyday tasks such as editing photos, playing movies, and browsing the web. Some XPRT tools even measure battery life. All of the BenchmarkXPRT family (the XPRTs) of evaluation tools are available to the public for free.

The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community is a forum where registered members can contribute to the process of creating and improving the XPRTs. To learn more about the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community and the XPRT family of benchmarks, visit BenchmarkXPRT.com.

About Principled Technologies, Inc.

Principled Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of technology marketing and learning & development services. It administers the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. The company is located in Durham, North Carolina, in NC’s Research Triangle Park region. For more information, please visit PrincipledTechnologies.com.

Company Contact
Eric Hale
Principled Technologies, Inc.
1007 Slater Road, Suite 300
Durham, NC 27703

Posted in Press Releases |

XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight Shines on the Apple iPhone 7

By Eric Hale

on September 21, 2016

DURHAM, NC–(Marketwired – September 21, 2016) – Today, Principled Technologies (PT) released performance results for the Apple iPhone 7 on the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight. The iPhone 7 is one of this year’s most anticipated new smartphones.

The Apple iPhone 7, released on September 16, combines the new Apple A10 Fusion processor, 2 GB of RAM, and iOS 10 with a 4.7″ screen, 1334 x 750 display resolution, and 4K video-recording capabilities. The Spotlight includes performance scores from the WebXPRT 2015 benchmark, which uses six browser-based workloads to compare the performance of almost any Web-enabled device.

The XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight posts PT-verified BenchmarkXPRT performance results and specs online for new devices as they come to market. These results give buyers the facts they need to make informed buying decisions based on individual needs and preferences.

To see the full list of tested devices, go to the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight page.

About Principled Technologies, Inc.

Company Contact

Eric Hale
Principled Technologies, Inc.
1007 Slater Road, Suite #300
Durham, NC 27703
Email contact

Posted in Press Releases |

How we do it

By Eric Hale

on September 15, 2016

In the modern world, we’re awash in statistics and it’s interesting how they sometimes contradict each other. In this season, polls are an obvious example. They seldom agree and sometimes, as in the case of Brexit, they can be spectacularly wrong.

The real world is complicated and there are many ways to look at the data. An approach can be valid for certain cases, but less so for others. This is why it’s so important to explain your methods and calculations.

We’ve talked before about the statistics we use in the XPRTs. There are a set of white papers that describe how the tests work and how we perform the calculations. If you’re interested, a great place to start is the WebXPRT 2013 results calculation and confidence interval white paper, which describes the statistics in detail and links to a spreadsheet with a detailed example.

Any methodology can be improved, so if you have any ideas, let us know!

Eric

Posted in WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2013, WebXPRT 2013 results, White papers |

Doing things a little differently

By Eric Hale

on September 8, 2016

I enjoyed watching the Apple Event live yesterday. There were some very impressive announcements. (And a few which were not so impressive – the Breathe app would get on my nerves really fast!)

One thing that I was very impressed by was the ability of the iPhone 7 Plus camera to create depth-of-field effects. Some of the photos demonstrated how the phone used machine learning to identify people in the shot and keep them in focus while blurring the background, creating a shallow depth of field. This causes the subjects in a photo to really stand out. The way we take photos is not the only thing that’s changing. There was a mention of machine learning being part of Apple’s QuickType keyboard, to help with “contextual prediction.”

This is only one product announcement, but it’s a reminder that we need to be constantly examining every part of the XPRTs. Recently, we talked a bit about how people will be using their devices in new ways in the coming months, and we need to be developing tests for these new applications. However, we must also stay focused on keeping existing tests fresh. People will keep taking photos, but today’s photo editing tests may not be relevant a year or two from now.

Were there any announcements yesterday that got you excited? Let us know!

Eric

Posted in Apple, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Future of performance evaluation, Machine learning, Phones, What makes a good benchmark? |

Author Archives: Eric Hale

How do you say that?

Taking a detour

WebXPRT delivers over 100,000 real-world results

XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight Shines on the Apple iPhone 7

How we do it

Doing things a little differently

Check out the other XPRTs: