Tag Archive for 'memory'

Firefox is a memory hog

The Firefox web browser is well-known for its memory leak problems. If you leave it open for a long enough time, it can take up as much as 200 MB of memory, even if you’re not actively using it. As an experiment, I opened up both Firefox and Internet Explorer and looked at the memory consumption of both when they had been open for a very short amount of time. The results are fairly interesting. Firefox was taking up almost five times as much RAM as Internet Explorer. And considering that Firefox was taking up more than 100 MB during my browsing session a short while earlier, it’s not inconceivable that the ratio would have gone up over time. Here’s the screenshot:

Firefox vs. IE

Granted, I may have a few extensions enabled on Firefox that IE doesn’t have, but that doesn’t help the memory leak problem. Or the incredibly slow startup time. Get working on this, Mozilla! Or I may be forced to switch to Opera.

Upgrade

I upgraded my laptop memory from 1 GB to 2 GB, and I have to say I’ve noticed a huge increase in performance already. Word to the wise: if you get Vista, don’t stick with the bare minimum of RAM.

 

May 2012
S M T W T F S
« Apr    
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
Support Wikipedia