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Ask Slashdot: Best Small-Footprint Modern Browser?
Annirak writes "I've recently started a paid internship at a company which is expanding faster than their IT department can supply new hardware. As a consequence, I've been issued a P4 2.4GHz with 512MB of RAM. Currently, I am using Firefox 4, but I find that it eats up far too much of my limited RAM. I'd rather not give up some of the more modern UI features that are offered by the current versions of Firefox and Chrome, but I need a smaller footprint. What other browsers are out there which could help me conserve resources?"
It's not expensive and if you get worth out of the investment it's a good thing all the way around.
Spoken like someone who hasn't looked at DDR1 RAM prices lately.
I use Opera 11 with Windows 2000 on my P3 with 256 MB of RAM and it works quite well.
is of course Lynx.
Aside from that Opera should require at lot less resources.
Try disabling flash, other plugins, and javascript. It makes 99% of sites faster, and only breaks about 30% of sites. Of the sites that aren't worthless, only about 5% are broken (mostly shopping sites).
If you install NoScript in Firefox, you can selectively enable/disable scripts and flash and other plugins for specific domains, only enabling what you want.
This also prevents most advertisements from loading.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I saw the "expanding faster than their IT department can supply new hardware" note, but - come on. That hardware is close to a decade old! Is their IT department run by an 80-year-old man?
#DeleteChrome
Don't do this. As illogical as uppity Slashdot "power users" think it is, IT departments hate it when people upgrade their machines without consulting them. Full-time employees, they'd probably be willing to let it slide after a stern talk, but for interns? No guarantees.
As for keeping memory usage down, Opera 9 is a good bet (10 is a little heavier), but no matter what browser you use, you may have to change your browsing habits a little. Loads of tabs open is going to eat up memory no matter what browser you're on, and all of them have memory leaks to some extent (though none quite so bad as Firefox...), so you may want to set your browser to "reopen the tabs I had last" on startup, and just quit-restart every now and then.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
"...expanding faster than their IT department can supply new hardware" is corporate terms for "..because we are almost broke"
My recommendation, just stay away.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Run the browser on the Corei7 guy's computer, use his RAM, and see it on yours. ;-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Whatever. Given how busy it sounds the IT department is, they should have bigger things to worry about than whether an intern added more memory to a machine. That change isn't going to conflict with their prebuilt system images the way that changing a video card would, and this machine is most likely going to the dumpster as soon as his internship is over anyway.
Furthermore, any competent IT department will know that adding unsupported software is a bigger problem than adding unsupported hardware. If they don't care about him installing whatever browser he wants, why would they care about adding more memory.
I think you would want to give Opera a try. I compared some of the major browsers several months ago, and what I found was that Chrome was fast but uses RAM excessively, and Firefox was slow but used less RAM. Opera seemed to be strong in both speed and memory conservation, the main drawback being that it is not open source. Firefox is faster now that version 4 is out, putting it in competitive range of Opera, although I'd wager that Opera is still more efficient.
Now if you're able and willing to try non-mainstream browsers, there are a lot of fun things you can play with. Epiphany is a popular underdog choice, and other alternative browsers run a full gamut of niches. In the past I've tried Konqueror, Midori, Aurora, Dillo, and yes, even elinks (I've actually used it productively, so I'm not joking). There is even that funny K-Meleon browser for windows. I don't know how many of these are still in active development, but many alternative browsers do excel in being lightweight, so on systems with limited resources you will see noticeable speed gains. The downside is that you will get compatibility problems, and the Javascript engine may be slow.
If you really want to have fun try browsers designed for embedded/mobile systems, such as Android.
Yes, that stick of RAM can fuck up the computer that the IT department will then have to fix or replace. In car analogy terms: you wouldn't bolt on a turbo kit on a company car just because you thought it wasn't fast enough, would you?
Of course that's not as bad as running a rouge server like that guy in the hospital, but it's also not as bad as Hitler, so I'm not sure what's the point of making such comparisons.
I like my rouge server, but not as much as my teal one.
This happened to me (an apparently many other interns) at one of the National Laboratories. The lab wasn't strapped for cash nor going away anytime soon. The real problem was that the guy that hired me didn't plan ahead and order a computer (which can take weeks to get thanks to procurement overhead), so he panicked and snagged one on the way to reapplication. I scrounged up some more RAM from reapp, and it worked fine for the three months I was there.
By "turn off" I assume you mean "don't turn on", because if you don't set up a mail account, enable Unite, or download a torrent with the built in client, these features will use the same amount of memory as they would disabled.
Only whore servers wear so much rouge. Teach your server some proportion.
Yes, it is. If you read what he said it was heavily implied the IT Department _don't_ think it's acceptable, but they are likely has hand-tied as he is. The IT Department is responsible for the machine and everything in and on it. Screwing with that without their permission is rude at best.
Now if the company in question has such a small budget for IT (or at least for interns) then their current growth may very well not last long somply given how much time people are waiting for their computers.
Personally, I'd go talk to them, see if they mind. If not let them know when it's actually done so they can update their records and call it good.
Normal people worry me!
I'm sorry, adding some RAM is going ot tilt the IT Department?
Yes, opening the machine and messing with the internals will annoy IT.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You don't really have to disable anything, all that functionality is there but it's not doing anything until you use it.
I set up Opera for my dad on a P4/512MB PC, and it does indeed run very well. However, soon he started complaining that it was very slow. I checked and it turned out that he had so many tabs open (many of them with some Flash videos paused) that you could only see their icons and none of the title text. Oops.
Admittedly I have the same habit of using tabs as bookmarks, but at least I have 16 times as much RAM and a huge monitor to fit them all.
For some supporting details, see: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-9-chrome-10-opera-11,2897-11.html
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
You can also configure Firefox not to cache rendered pages in RAM.
But Arora might be the browser you're looking for.
http://code.google.com/p/arora/
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I second the opera recommendation, even if endorsing opera on slashdot means getting flak from the haters. I currently have around 140 tabs open in opera and I am only using 1200mb of ram. Try doing that in any other modern browser :)
To the OP:
It is not YOUR computer. YOU should not, under any circumstances, upgrade it. People managed to do "real" work just fine a couple years ago when that computer was mainstream.
It's not ONLY a stick of ram. It's an indicator to your employer that you don't understand boundaries, roles, and responsibilities.
... or install Windows 98 and use IE6 SP1
Speaking as an IT guy, a non-full time intern gets whatever's left on the shelf, unless his department coughs up the money to buy him a real system. No? Then he gets whatever's left. He didn't specify OS, but XP Professional runs much, much better with 1 gig of memory instead of 1/2. I definitely wouldn't do it off my own bat though: the idea of users randomly cracking their cases and field-modifying equipment makes my hair stand on end. It's not the stick of RAM per se, it's the principle of the thing.
No statement is true, not even this one.
No, a stick of RAM will *NOT* fuck up their ANCIENT piece of shit GARAGE SALE pc.
And *if* on the OUT OF THIS GALAXY chance it did, they have much bigger issues.
If the machine is damaged somehow during installation, then yes, it will tick off IT.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
I too am running Firefox 3.6 on Debian Squeeze, but with 3gigs of RAM. I have FlashBlock and BetterPrivacy installed, but not NoScript. With only 20 tabs open I have to restart firefox at least once a week or my computer will grind to a halt. It seems to work like this:
Firefox: Hmm, there's still memory available, I'll hold more pages in memory.
Linux: Crap memory is getting tight, I should move some of this to swap.
Firefox: Hey look there's more memory available now, I'll hold more sites in memory.
And so on, until everything but firefox is pushed out to swap.
Every review I've read says otherwise.
Here's one of the better ones:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-9-chrome-10-opera-11,2897-11.html
If you'd like to disagree, please back it up with evidence.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Sorry Frosty, but you just don't seem to get that the IT department NEEDS to know what is going on with the equipment, regardless of whether it is a brand new shiny system, or an ancient hunk of crap.
If the OP simply gets permission to add RAM, or is lucky enough to convince the IT department to buy and install it, then everyone wins. If he just buys it, and installs it, then everyone loses.
With permission, the OP gets what he needs to function (as long as it is actually necessary, and the function provided is more than to just be able to watch the latest youtube videos), and the IT department knows about the change, so that if something goes wrong with the PC, they can correct it more easily.
The additional benefit is that the IT department can track the expense of bringing the antiquated garbage to a usable condition, and can justify to the bean counters that they need to bring in more new PC's so that the workers (full time, part time, AND interns) can function properly.
If the OP just acquires an additional stick of RAM, then:
1. He's out the cash for the RAM.
2. If the OP doesn't get the exact correct stick of RAM, then odd issues may arise, generating unnecessary expensive trouble tickets. In addition, if the OP doesn't admit that he/she did this, then there are extra steps introduced because the system is no longer what it is documented as... (It just adds extra unnecessary confusion.)
3. The machine works better, but the cost is not accounted for, and it makes it more difficult to justify replacing it, as there is no cost that can be shown to accounting.
Frankly, it just screws up everything if it doesn't go through the IT department.
Once the precedent is set, then you have opened up a can of worms where every intern (and other person in the establishment) thinks it's okay to change out system parts to suit their fancy. Bob changes out his video card, Sue adds a blue-ray burner, and Elmo decides that he prefers to use Open Office and Firefox, because if they can change the hardware (and drivers), then why can't he change software?
You end up with a difficult to maintain mess, and the bean counters are wondering how come it is so expensive to run the computers...
(This doesn't even begin to touch on security issues)
It's not ONLY a stick of ram. It's an indicator to your employer that you don't understand boundaries, roles, and responsibilities.
Wow, I'm glad I don't work at your company. I've been blessed with a sane IT guy where I work. When I said I needed a Linux desktop, he got me a bare PC, handed it over to me and said, "Your on your own". We get along great.
Just a little judgmental aren't we? Tabs for me are like temporary bookmarks. Things I will forget if I actually bookmark them or wont need later really. The rationale is if I get enough tabs open (I have a 3 30" monitors @ 2560x1600 so it's not like it's squeezed into a tiny space on my screen) that I will get annoyed enough to go back to them and read or disseminate what was useful out of them. This is just what works for me and I have 16gb of ram so no, I am not worried. Since this is slashdot (well at least it would apply on the old slashdot where it was more "news for nerds), I'm sure quite a few of us do quirky things that most wouldn't understand.
If they get upset that he spent $100 of his own money on RAM, *that's* the sign they don't care about initative.
Or, it's a sign that they don't want some intern fucking around and modifying company property just because he wants to open ten browser tabs at once.
I am a managed IT provider for dozens of local companies.
Sometimes, all they'll pay for is used second PC's for some job functions and locations. If the job can be done using the hardware as provided, why should the company pay more?
If one of our clients interferes with a pc we provide, it is $250/hr charge, door to door, for us to look at it, PLUS penalties for equipment damage for parts.
If he damages the machine opening it, damages the ram, or simply messes up a setting in the machine playing with it, that's a charge his employer *will* get hit with.
In the last month alone i've responded to calls of someone who thought 3.5gb of ram wasnt enough, so he bestbuyed 8gb of ddr2 and shoved it in, breaking one ram slot holder; on an XP machine that cannot be upgraded to 7 yet for sfotware dependency issues; a guy who managed to break a dvi port trying to setup dual monitor with the old vga he had from home, and a woman who thought the filters on the machine were dirty, so she washed them with a hose. on the pc. while it was running ( dock yard inventory machine at a produce shipper)
Each of those calls were billed at $500+ in charges to the employer.
At least one person was fired and escorted out when i presented the bill.
How would you propose adding RAM to a maxed-out system?
The laptop I'm typing this from has 1GB of RAM. This is the maximum it supports; it cannot take more. Incidentally, the laptop is over 8 years old and runs fine, even the battery is still OK. It's a Celeron system currently running Lubuntu 10.04, since the LXDE desktop is leaner than Gnome or KDE (some unnecessary services are disabled also). I rely on Opera as the primary browser, and usually don't need a swap file even with a good number of tabs open in Opera, and some other applications running (right now: Inkscape, Gimp, Thunderbird, Pidgin, and a few lxterminal/bash/pcmanfm windows).
[warning: rant] This laptop has not been replaced partly because modern laptops with equivalent displays (1920x1200) are priced outrageously. I see no reason to downgrade to a 1920x1080 shortscreen, but object to the notion of paying double the money to keep the extra 120 rows of pixels. [apologies for rant]
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
There are several free X servers that can run on WIndows - Xming, Cygwin, etc. Run one of them and log in to a nearby Linux server that has enough RAM to actually run Firefox on. Or boot Linux from a memory stick.
Or if you only have Windows servers, use Windows Remote Desktop to run the browser on one of them, though that's a bit more awkward.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In other words: Go through proper channels. Duh.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
WTF?
I worked for a community college that didn't have shit for money. I brought in my own printer/scanner, asked IT to load drivers which they were happy to do, and emphasized I didn't need any support and would be delighted to be whatever their idea of a good customer was. (That's a drastic change from the snivelling and venting they usually dealt with.)
IT was happy, my boss was happy (he didn't have a scanner), and I could print without disturbing anyone else. The boss authorized buying ink cartridges since all printing was work-related.
You can get lots of things done by ASKING NICELY. Fucking customer skills aren't rocket science. Offering to give the job free stuff to improve PRODUCTIVITY works fine and shows initiative.
I did the same thing as an NCO in the Air Force. It got shit done, it was cheap (I get more gear than I need for free since I fix PCs on the side), and it lightens the workload for other people.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"Perhaps you have never tried to develop software on a machine that can't run the IDE without swapping."
vi doesn't swap that much.
If you need some sort of fancy GUI program then nedit or gedit ought to do the trick too...
Once the precedent is set, then you have opened up a can of worms where every intern (and other person in the establishment) thinks it's okay to change out system parts to suit their fancy. Bob changes out his video card, Sue adds a blue-ray burner, and Elmo decides that he prefers to use Open Office and Firefox, because if they can change the hardware (and drivers), then why can't he change software?
Don't forget bringing in a copy of Creative Suite 5 that he got from his uncle that bought it in a market in China on vacation last year...
And if just slipping in a a stick is OK, can I borrow your wife? It's not like it will break her or anything...
You put rouge on your computer???
I love my computer, but it's beautiful without makeup.
Nail on the head.
To the OP: If the hardware is *legitimately* too old to support your business needs (not your "slashdot reading" needs), then you should build a case for an upgrade or replacement. To do that, figure out how much they're paying you, and how long you'll be paid for as an intern.
Then calculate how much time you're wasting due to a slow computer. And don't just pull numbers out of your ass. Actually time stuff like bootup/login, load times, etc., and ask a co-worker with a modern system if you can do the same with theirs as a baseline, so you can calculate what portion of that time is actually wasted time due to slow/old/bad hardware.
Then, you make you pitch like so: "I'm spending X minutes per day twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to finish running. You're paying me X dollars an hour. A RAM upgrade would cost X dollars, and reduce my wasted daily time by X%." If the cost of the upgrade is more than the amount of time they're paying you for that's legitimately wasted then no, a RAM upgrade doesn't make sense. If the cost of the upgrade is significantly cheaper than the value of the time they're paying you for that's legitimately wasted, then yes, a RAM upgrade makes a lot of sense.
If you can't get management support, then spending your own money and time is foolish, and is just as likely to be unappreciated & met with hostility as it is to be met with cheers of "Way to take the initiative, old chap!"
To the OP:
It is not YOUR computer. YOU should not, under any circumstances, upgrade it.
Cogent and on point.
People managed to do "real" work just fine a couple years ago when that computer was mainstream.
Fail.
People managed to do "real" work just fine, a couple of years ago, before Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 3. THEN, a half-gig of RAM was enough to let you run Firefox (or any other reasonably-resource-intensive application) at reasonable speed. NOW, it's not, because SP3 increased Windows XP's minimum RAM requirement to the point that not only Firefox, but EVERY reasonably-resource-intensive application ends up RAM-starved, and, as a consequence, the system constantly has to swap to "virtual RAM". In fact, I'd be surprised if switching to Opera makes any noticeable difference in performance, because SP3 is such an enormous, snorking, resource hog.
The OP needs a RAM upgrade - or a new computer. If he can build a convincing business case for it, he should do so. If not, I'd recommend he "accidentally" spill a cup of coffee into his computer's power supply - or inadvertently drop it down a stairwell.
Check out my novel.
Never had a bad stick of RAM? Ever? It can be a bitch to diagnose when you're getting a bluescreen every few days with an error message from a different driver.
Taking advice from random people on /. (particularly if they're typing with Caps Lock on) about how to get along well with fellow (senior) employees is like asking your new hair stylist to help you decide between USB3 and Thunderbolt. It's not impossible that you'll get good advice that fits your situation... but I wouldn't count on it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Anecdotal evidence if that would have been the company I work for:
1) Some department gets interns, the IT department gets a call the day they arrive that they "need a PC now!!!".
2) No clear classification ever on what they need the PC for.
So of course, we have to pull some junker out from somewhere so that they can have one "now", because it is a very bad idea to have new PCs lying around and getting outdated before someone actually request to have one.
When it becomes evident (perhaps through an e-mail to the person responsible for the intern, CCed to us (IT)) that that person actually needs better hardware to do their job, then that person usually gets it, because having people waste time with not adequate hardware usually costs way more than an upgrade.
Encouraging an intern to approach the corporate world by saying "Hey, since you won't give me the proper tools to do my job, is it okay if I spend my own money (which you're paying me) to purchase my own?" Is doing him no favors. If your company isn't concerned about wasting your time, then you shouldn't be either, and you certainly shouldn't be paying your own money to "help out" your company if they're to cheap to do it themselves.
If you offer it, they will ride you for all you're worth:
"Why don't we just page you using your personal cell phone?" "Great, you can reimburse me a portion of my monthly bill then?" "Oh we can't do that." "Then don't page me on my personal number."
"Why don't you just work from home in the evening?" "Great, will you provide me with the tools and reimburse me for part of my home internet fees?" "Oh we can't do that." "Then I can't work from home."
If you don't set limits on the freeloading your company is allowed to engage in, you're doing yourself a disservice.
Oh man, you have to be trolling, right? Right?
You've obviously never had to troubleshoot issues caused by a bad/mismatched stick of RAM. I feel real bad for the kid in IT who has to investigate why "all of a sudden" this computer is having occasional blue screens, application crashes, or some other symptom which could just as easily be attributed to a dozen different causes. Of course the person who installed the RAM won't own up to it at that point, as the "user" knows what they did is wrong but has probably convinced themselves that installing RAM couldn't possibly have been the cause ... after all the computer turns on, right?
I've seen all this happen just because a kingston dimm didn't want to play nice with a corsair dimm, or vice-versa. Sometimes things that, in theory, should never be an issue end up being the cause of my greatest headaches. Users playing DIY don't make things any easier.
In a good company, the extra that you're willing to do pays off very well in the long run. Working an extra 20 hours a week, unpaid for, unasked for, and filling up half a bookcase with texts I bought myself (no company payback) helped take me from about $45000 a year to $105000 a year in 8 years.
Doing the same in a poor company earned me praise and promises and little else. Know your company. Know yourself.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Why the HELL do you need 140 tabs open at once?
That's thinking the wrong way around. Why would you want to bother closing tabs manually? And if you don't, tabs start to crop up... And then if the browser can't cope, it is a problem with the browser, not user who doesn't want to do manual organizing just to please his browser.