Comparing Memory Usage of Firefox 2 vs 3

DaMan writes "ZDNet picks up on yesterday's Firefox 3 beta 1 review by comparing the memory usage of Firefox 2 against the latest beta. The results from one of the tests is quite interesting, after loading 12 pages and waiting 5 minutes, 2 used 103,180KB and 3 used 62,312KB. IE used 89,756KB.""

Comments

Re:How are they measuring?

[Threni]

Do this experiment.
1) Buy enough ram so you now have 4GB.
2) Just use whichever damn browser you like.
3) Go outside and get on with it (your life, that is).

Observe which procedure (this, or that detailed in the OP) brings more joy to your life. Frankly I don't give a shit if Firefix uses a few hundred meg, because I earn enough to buy a few hundred megs in the time it would take me to do the original procedure.

Re:not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand that attitude.

Are you proud that Firefox took the computing revolution, which literally put supercomputers in everyone's home, and reduced those supercomputers to slow, unstable, browse-only webTV like appliances ?

Most of the Firefox defenders who make the "memory doesn't matter" argument, already know the following:

1) Other programs (Opera) do largely the same task in a 10th the memory, and half the CPU
2) A substantial portion of computers out there have less memory than can run Firefox well

Given that these facts aren't new to you, why can't you mentally address the "Firefox is a fat hog" issue ? I think some of you guys love Firefox the way Apple users like Apples, and then somehow otherwise rational people end up defending the corporate shenanigans of Steve Jobs.

I mean, it's not like your post made me STOP NOTICING that my computer is slow when I run Firefox. Instead, I am forced to notice a disparity between what my computer does when I use firefox (become crippled) and what "SkankinMonkey" posted on slashdot. I mean, I know that when I click on the URL bar after the browser has been open a while, the harddrive light will come on for 15 seconds or so, and then another 10 seconds after that I will get a cursor and can type in a new URL. You, or at least the majority of people promoting the "memory doesn't matter" mantra, know that also.

I know that as I am sitting here, I have a 3 MB jpg image that needs to be downsized for a customer's web page, and I know that to do the simple ImageMagick "convert" command I need to kill this Firefox first. If Firefox is not there, it will take a couple of minutes. If Firefox is running and has been for several hours of browsing, then forget it, it will take at least 45 minutes. By the way, I did all those "about:config" settings that are supposed to reduce you memory usage, and have no extensions loaded. Memory usage does go down when I reduce the cache size, but it doesn't solve the problems, mainly because it is probably due to memory fragmentation.

I think there is a similarity between the Firefox Anti-Defamation League and the hard-core LISP bigots. Here are some of the similarities:

1) both groups deny that the fact that their software is obviously inefficient in use of the computer matters
2) as a corallary to the above, both groups disparage computers that have less than cutting-edge benchmarks
3) as a corallary to the above, both groups drift into a contemptable attitude towards those with less economic resources
4) I suspect, but cannot prove, that membership in both groups is associated with an extremely empowering early experience using the technology in question

I think it would behove you to examine the history of LISP cultism. On comp.os.lang.lisp you can see people predicting the return of LISP given that all computers will soon X amount of RAM, for about the last 15 years. All computers in use today have specifications that once caused LISPers to announce the return of the Messiah. Think about that.

Firepenguin vs. Fireborg

[Zero__Kelvin]

I think Firefox needs a new naming scheme that makes explicit what platform it is running on, since people so often say "I'm running Firefox and it sux thusly" without identifying the platform. Then we would mostly "I'm running Firepenguin and it works great for me" and "I'm running Fireborg and it suxors." Then we could simply say to the latter group: "I'm afraid you implicitly gave up any right to stability, security or reliability as you chose an OS that quite has no commitment to these concepts." Yes, I know some people have experienced issues on Linux boxes as well, I'm merely saying that the number is certain to be quite disproportionate.

That being said, many posting here have a little knowledge about how memory use and performance correlate. A little knowlege is a dangerous thing.The assumption that less memory use is better is absurd. If I have 1.5 Gig free and my browser is spending its time conserving memory rather than rendering pages that is VERY WRONG. If it is Linux, use the memory you need and let the Kernel handle swapping, etc. Don't WASTE it, but don't waste memory by not using available memory either." That is a much bigger waste.

Conserve memory when memory needs to be conserved , and use more memory when plenty of memory is available.

A slightly off topic aside, hopefully eye opening to some, exemplifying how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing:

I once requisitioned 16 Megs of RAM to add to the 16 Meg I had back in Win95 days. The typical person with minimal knowledge who thought he had a lot of it was trying to block my order, because he added 16 to his box and it still said 0% free so he concluded that "Windows just allocates and uses all the memory you give it." ROTFLMAO. I tried to explain to him about swapfiles and show him that the swapfile size decreased in proportion to the added RAM and why that was a HUGE win from a performance perspective, alas to no avail.

He told me he would be watching for my P.O. to block it, and I told him to have fun watching it go right through. I explained things to the CEO, who was not a complete moron, and he did in fact ultimately watch with gritted teeth as it got processed under direct approval of the CEO of the company. I figure we spent 10 times the money wasting time trying to address his ignorance than the actual RAM costs. The guy was quite an ASSet to the company :-)