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Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:14:28
by gunderwood
It just seems that as it grows it gets slower and slower. I've gotten tired enough of it and decided to try Opera. So far it is much, much faster.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:27:12
by ProShooter
FF?

Firefighter?

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:56:28
by allingeneral
ProShooter wrote:FF?

Firefighter?
FireFox. Welcome to the Geeks with Guns forum, ProShooter :)

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:01:06
by Chasbo00
Opera fan here.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:11:34
by allingeneral
I liked FireFox in the beginning. It has become a huge memory hog though. Not to mention that it seems to crash on me at the most inopportune times. Well, when is a good time to crash, really.

For compatibility's sake, I still think it's the bet thing out there.

Here's a screen shot of FF being a memory hog... 434MB? WHAT?!? Come on guys - ya gotta do better than that! Cache the tabs that I'm not using or something!

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 05:31:21
by zephyp
I jumped IE to FF and now use Chrome. FF has just gotten too fat. The downside to Chrome is it doesnt have as many doohickies but it runs faster and I dont use all those functions/gadgets on the other browsers anyway...

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 07:51:56
by gunderwood
allingeneral wrote:I liked FireFox in the beginning. It has become a huge memory hog though. Not to mention that it seems to crash on me at the most inopportune times. Well, when is a good time to crash, really.
I don't mind the memory hog issues. I'm a big fan of caching and "memory not used is memory wasted." I rather like the way Linux and now Windows 7 use RAM to cache everything; it just makes the user experience so much better. I've actually had W7 use all 16GB of RAM in one of my boxes, of course only 5-6GB was actually active at that time. Right now that box only has 3GB used and 4GB cached.

Edit: Any incompatibility issues with Opera are almost always certain websites coding for IE and breaking standards.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:43:38
by Yarddawg
Wow Rick! I just checked mine. With 2 tabs open, I'm only showing Firefox as using 88K. You must have a ton of tabs open buddy!

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:37:58
by allingeneral
Yarddawg wrote:Wow Rick! I just checked mine. With 2 tabs open, I'm only showing Firefox as using 88K. You must have a ton of tabs open buddy!
Honestly, I think FF has a few memory leak issues. I usually run with about 5 to 8 tabs open at any given time.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:00:48
by ProShooter
allingeneral wrote:
ProShooter wrote:FF?

Firefighter?
FireFox. Welcome to the Geeks with Guns forum, ProShooter :)

LOL! I just read the whole thread and have no earthly idea what you geeks are talking about!

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:01:11
by gunderwood
ProShooter wrote:
allingeneral wrote:
ProShooter wrote:FF?

Firefighter?
FireFox. Welcome to the Geeks with Guns forum, ProShooter :)

LOL! I just read the whole thread and have no earthly idea what you geeks are talking about!
Internet browsers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla's FireFox (FF), Opera, Google's Chrome, etc. All just applications for viewing the Internet.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:12:47
by ProShooter
gunderwood wrote:Internet browsers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla's FireFox (FF), Opera, Google's Chrome, etc. All just applications for viewing the Internet.
I didn't fill out no application, I just pushed the power button and it got me on dis here innernetz! :clap:

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:18:56
by Unkn0wN
ProShooter wrote:
gunderwood wrote:Internet browsers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla's FireFox (FF), Opera, Google's Chrome, etc. All just applications for viewing the Internet.
I didn't fill out no application, I just pushed the power button and it got me on dis here innernetz! :clap:

LMAO (ProShooter, that means "Laughing My @ss Off)! :hysterical:

/ontopic
I have no problems with FF at home, but what I am really getting tired of is this slow as a snail network here at work.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:50:48
by AlanM
allingeneral wrote:
Yarddawg wrote:Wow Rick! I just checked mine. With 2 tabs open, I'm only showing Firefox as using 88K. You must have a ton of tabs open buddy!
Honestly, I think FF has a few memory leak issues. I usually run with about 5 to 8 tabs open at any given time.
That's EXACTLY the problem.
FF is written in C++ and there are a lot of programmers out there that believed Microsoft when they said that closing a process will cause all memory that that process requested to be returned to the free memory pool and/or that garbage collection will find that orphaned memory and return it to the pool.
That is not the case at all. Every time the programmer requests an object instance be created a memory allocation request goes out and is serviced. If the programmer doesn't explicitly return that object instance to the system that memory is lost to the system and even garbage collection will not find it.
The objects that I'm talking about are windows, tabs, fonts, brushes for graphics, and all sorts of high level processes.
When I was programming in C++ for Windows NT we had a inviolate rule that if you created an instance of an object in a process you were required to immediately add a line in the process shutdown routine to return that object's memory. I spent a lot of time tracking down and killing memory leaks. I know of what I speak.

I am currently using FireFox 3.6.14, although I've tried FireFox 4 beta, and I keep an instance of Windows Task Manager on my task bar. (I start it as the first thing I do on a cold startup.) I periodically check FF's memory footprint and if it gets too high I kill it from Task Manager and then restart it. FF remembers all my windows and tabs and restores them all and I continue from there.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:56:38
by OakRidgeStars
I must be living right or something, because I'm not having any memory issues with FF. I've trimmed down XP to the bare essentials when it comes to apps running in the background. That, and 4GB of RAM, keep my humble computer running just fine-dandy :clap:

I'm going to build a new machine this month for Windows 7 once I decide on what I want under the hood.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:25:09
by gunderwood
OakRidgeStars wrote:I must be living right or something, because I'm not having any memory issues with FF. I've trimmed down XP to the bare essentials when it comes to apps running in the background. That, and 4GB of RAM, keep my humble computer running just fine-dandy :clap:

I'm going to build a new machine this month for Windows 7 once I decide on what I want under the hood.
I've actually been preparing a "class" concept where I would help people choose the right parts to meet their needs and help them build it. All while providing some education on how things work, what specs mean and why they are or are not useful to them, etc. The intent is as much to educate as it is to build a PC. If they are building a halfway decent PC the money saved by building it themselves easily covers the cost of the class.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:36:12
by t33j
Been chroming it for between 6 months and a year. Very happy with it but its mssing a couple non-critical things.

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Sat, 05 Mar 2011 05:43:23
by gfost1
Howdy, Y'all,

+1 for Chrome. Everyone in my house still uses FF except me. I was introduced to Chrome when we migrated to cloud-mail at work. I didn't like it at first, but it is way faster than FF and a tad quicker than IE, especially on the older hardware we use. That said, the last couple of releases of FF seem to be quicker, and once it's up and running, it doesn't seem that much slower than Chrome or IE. 'course I'm an old dos guy, and I never got into the habit of leaving a lot of open windows (or tabs) cluttering things up.

We all still use XP, don't know if that alters the browsing experience compared to Vista/7.

Regards,
George

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Sat, 05 Mar 2011 05:52:41
by gfost1
gunderwood wrote: I've actually been preparing a "class" concept where I would help people choose the right parts to meet their needs and help them build it.
Intel just made that a lot easier, Eh? Pick a Sandy Bridge cpu, wait 'til april for a mobo ...

Regards,

George

Re: Anyone else getting tired of an ever slowing FF?

Posted: Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:22:09
by gunderwood
gfost1 wrote:
gunderwood wrote: I've actually been preparing a "class" concept where I would help people choose the right parts to meet their needs and help them build it.
Intel just made that a lot easier, Eh? Pick a Sandy Bridge cpu, wait 'til april for a mobo ...

Regards,

George
It depends on what you want. The SB GPU is a huge step up for Intel integrated graphics, but still falls way short of being considered good IMHO. If you are seriously considering SB graphics, then all you needed to do before was just buy a MB which had it integrated. If all you do is browse VGOF, check email, etc. then you don't need much at all. However, that group of people is usually just happy with a $300-$500 PC from Walmart and isn't really the intended target audience. New MBs based on the B3 stepping are starting to show up now.