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Adapting to a changing tech landscape

The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community started almost 10 years ago with the development of the High Definition Experience & Performance Ratings Test, also known as HDXPRT. Back then, we distributed the benchmark to interested parties by mailing out physical DVDs. We’ve come a long way since then, as testers now freely and easily access six XPRT benchmarks from our site and major app stores.

Developers, hardware manufacturers, and tech journalists—the core group of XPRT testers—work within a constantly changing tech landscape. Because of our commitment to providing those testers with what they need, the XPRTs grew as we developed additional benchmarks to expand the reach of our tools from PCs to servers and all types of notebooks, Chromebooks, and mobile devices.

As today’s tech landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, our desire to play an active role in emerging markets continues to drive us to expand our testing capabilities into areas like machine learning (AIXPRT) and cloud-first applications (CloudXPRT). While these new technologies carry the potential to increase efficiency, improve quality, and boost the bottom line for companies around the world, it’s often difficult to decide where and how to invest in new hardware or services. The ever-present need for relevant and reliable data is the reason many organizations use the XPRTs to help make confident choices about their company’s future tech.

We just released a new video that helps to explain what the XPRTs provide and how they can play an important role in a company’s tech purchasing decisions. We hope you’ll check it out!

We’re excited about the continued growth of the XPRTs, and we’re eager to meet the challenges of adapting to the changing tech landscape. If you have any questions about the XPRTs or suggestions for future benchmarks, please let us know!

Justin

Principled Technologies and the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community release the CrXPRT 2 benchmark for Chromebooks

Durham, NC, April 20— Principled Technologies and the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community have released CrXPRT 2, a free app that measures Chromebook battery life, as well as how fast a Chromebook handles everyday tasks like playing video games, watching movies, editing pictures, and doing homework. Testers can install the app on Chromebooks from the Chrome Web Store or by clicking the Chrome Web Store button on CrXPRT.com.

The CrXPRT 2 performance test, which measures a Chromebook’s speed, gives testers an overall score and individual scores for each workload. In addition to an estimated battery life expressed in hours and minutes, the battery life test produces a separate performance score and a frames per second (FPS) rate for a built-in HTML5 gaming component. CrXPRT is user-friendly, delivering results that consumers can understand.

“CrXPRT is a popular, easy-to-use benchmark run by manufacturers, tech journalists, and consumers all around the world,” said Bill Catchings, co-founder of Principled Technologies, which administers the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. “CrXPRT 2 continues CrXPRT’s legacy of providing relevant and reliable performance and battery life data for Chrome OS devices.”

CrXPRT is part of the BenchmarkXPRT suite of performance evaluation tools, which includes AIXPRT, CloudXPRT, WebXPRT, TouchXPRT, HDXPRT, and MobileXPRT. The XPRTs help users get the facts before they buy, use, or evaluate tech products such as servers, desktops, laptops, and tablets.

To learn more about the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, go to www.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.

Principled Technologies, Inc. is located in Durham, North Carolina, USA. For more information, please visit www.PrincipledTechnologies.com.

Company Contact
Justin Greene
BenchmarkXPRT Development Community
Principled Technologies, Inc.
1007 Slater Road, Ste. 300 Durham, NC 27703
BenchmarkXPRTsupport@PrincipledTechnologies.com

CrXPRT 2 is here!

We’re excited to announce that CrXPRT 2 is now available to the public! Testers can install the app on Chromebooks by using this link to the Chrome Web Store listing, or by clicking the Chrome Web Store button on CrXPRT.com.

For those who may have missed our previous discussions about what’s new with CrXPRT 2, here is a recap of the key differences between CrXPRT 2015 and CrXPRT 2:

  • CrXPRT 2 has an all-new UI, with a focus on intuitive navigation.
  • The CrXPRT 2 performance test includes six of the seven workloads in CrXPRT 2015. Newer versions of Chrome can’t run the Photo Collage workload without a workaround, so we removed it from CrXPRT 2.
  • We updated the image resolutions and sizes for the Photo Effects and Face Detection workloads.
  • The battery life test now requires a full rundown, so the length of battery life tests will vary according to the battery life of the systems under test.
  • CrXPRT 2 no longer requires testers to enter luminance and audio measurements for battery life tests.
  • We added a second video playback segment to each battery life iteration.


As we’ve noted before, CrXPRT 2 overall performance test scores and battery life measurements are not comparable to CrXPRT 2015 scores. For testers that need to access CrXPRT 2015 for legacy comparison testing, we will continue to make CrXPRT 2015 available via a link on CrXPRT.com.

We appreciate everyone’s input during the CrXPRT 2 development process. If you have any further questions about CrXPRT 2, please let us know!

Justin

The CrXPRT 2 Community Preview is available!

We’re excited to announce that the CrXPRT 2 Community Preview (CP) is now available! BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members can access the preview using a direct link posted on the CrXPRT tab in the XPRT Members’ Area (login required), where they will also find the CrXPRT 2 CP user manual.

You can find more information about the key differences between CrXPRT 2015 and CrXPRT 2 in last week’s blog entry. During the preview period, we allow testers to publish CP test scores, but CrXPRT 2 overall performance test scores and battery life measurements are not comparable to CrXPRT 2015 scores.

If you have any questions about CrXPRT 2 or joining the community, please let us know!

Justin

The CrXPRT 2 Community Preview is almost here!

We appreciate everyone’s patience and feedback during the CrXPRT 2 development process. We’re excited to say that we’re now wrapping up some final details and expect to release the Community Preview (CP) within the next week.

Here is a summary of the key differences between CrXPRT 2015 and CrXPRT 2:

  • As we mentioned a few weeks ago, CrXPRT 2 has a completely new UI in line with the functional and aesthetic themes we used for the latest versions of WebXPRT, MobileXPRT, and HDXPRT, with a focus on intuitive navigation.
  • The CrXPRT 2 performance test includes six of the seven workloads in CrXPRT 2015. Newer versions of Chrome can’t run the Photo Collage workload without a workaround, so we removed it from CrXPRT 2.
  • We updated the images in the Photo Effects and Face Detection workloads to reflect more contemporary file resolutions and sizes.
  • The CrXPRT 2 battery life test requires a full rundown, so you’ll need charge your device to 100 percent before you can start the test, and the length of battery life tests will vary according to the battery life of the systems under test.
  • We no longer require testers to enter luminance and audio measurements in order to run a battery life test.
  • We added a second video playback segment to each battery life iteration.


We allow testers to publish CP test scores, but CrXPRT 2 overall performance test scores and battery life measurements are not comparable to CrXPRT 2015 scores.

Only BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members will be able to download the CrXPRT 2 CP. Because the Chrome team stopped providing search and browse functions for hosted and packaged Chrome apps in the Chrome Web Store, members will need a direct link to access the app. Once the app is available, we’ll post that link, along with the CrXPRT 2 CP user manual, on the CrXPRT tab in the XPRT Members’ Area (login required). We’ll also send a message to the community and post a notice here in the blog.

If you have any questions about CrXPRT 2 or joining the community, please let us know!

Justin

Thinking ahead to WebXPRT 4

It’s been about two years since we released WebXPRT 3, and we’re starting to think about the WebXPRT 4 development cycle. With over 529,000 runs to date, WebXPRT continues to be our most popular benchmark because it’s quick and easy to run, it runs on almost anything with a web browser, and it evaluates performance using the types of web technologies that many people use every day.

For each new version of WebXPRT, we start the development process by looking at browser trends and analyzing the feasibility of incorporating new web technologies into our workload scenarios. For example, in WebXPRT 3, we updated the Organize Album workload to include an image-classification task that uses deep learning. We also added an optical character recognition task to the Encrypt Notes and OCR scan workload, and introduced a new Online Homework workload that combined part of the DNA Sequence Analysis scenario with a writing sample/spell check scenario.

Here are the current WebXPRT 3 workloads:

  • Photo Enhancement: Applies three effects, each using Canvas, to two photos.
  • Organize Album Using AI: Detects faces and classifies images using the ConvNetJS neural network library.
  • Stock Option Pricing: Calculates and displays graphic views of a stock portfolio using Canvas, SVG, and dygraphs.js.
  • Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan: Encrypts notes in local storage and scans a receipt using optical character recognition.
  • Sales Graphs: Calculates and displays multiple views of sales data using InfoVis and d3.js.
  • Online Homework: Performs science and English assignment tasks using Web Workers and Typo.js spell check.

What new technologies or workload scenarios should we add? Are there any existing features we should remove? Would you be interested in an associated battery life test? We want to hear your thoughts and ideas about WebXPRT, so please tell us what you think!

Justin

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