Hi Michael,



Yes ,I hope you had a Happy 4th of July.

Of course it's come and gone by this time and so have the storms that preceded it

and left thousands if not millions without power and some even without homes.

I have a lot of empathy for the many people affected by this and who didn't have a very happy 4th ,to say the least.



Anyway ,onto less serious problems:

Quick answer , yes your observation of Firefox memory use is normal.



Main reason that internet browsers these days consume more memory

is the fact that most of them are "multi-threaded" ,which simply means

that they may employ a separate process for each connection or even multiple

connections to 1 webpage (or server)

This is most easily seen in Google Chrome which may use 1 instance of chrome.exe

for every tab you have open.

Check TaskManager and you'll see that just opening Chrome to the simple home page,

may spawn (in my case) 6 instances of chrome.exe



As to the values ,this depends on your OS and the Task Manager your using

and the column your referring to.

It also depends on the amount of installed RAM, since the more RAM you have

the more will be used.



Not knowing the OS you're on ,by the figures ,it seems to me that you're on an XP system

with about 1GB - 1.5 GB of RAM and looking at the Mem Usage column.



Figures would be different if taken on Vista or Win 7 ,since their Task Manager

shows memory usage differently.

Without going into a full-blown explanation - of which there are many on the internet -

suffice it to say that comparative values in the same column are still valid.



A figure that's high compared to others may well affect the sytem's operation and be the cause of slow downs and "hanging" , either of the browser or overall.



Actually ,your figures are quite "benign" .I've seen Firefox use as much as 800 MB

on an XP system which depending on the amount of installed RAM, will tend to freeze

the system.

There's no doubt that from some points of view Firefox can be a hog compared to other browsers.

I've done comparative tests and found eg Opera to be more efficient in handling memory

that many other browsers.



One "trick" you can employ is to temporarily minimize the browser and you'll see that it

will unload a good part of its memory usage.



On the other hand ,I think you may as well get used to seeing relatively high memory

usage for "modern' browsers, because they're geared to "modern' systems

which ,especially in the case of 64 bit systems , can have much more RAM than 32 bit systems.



There are other browsers ,but the moment you load then up with add-ons or plugins,

they will show an increase of memory usage.



Peter E.



--------------------------------------------------

From: "Michael Lanspa" 

Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2012 12:54 PM

To: <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: [PCSOFT] Mozilla the Hog



Happy 4th everyone.

Hope all are staying as cool as possible.

I run Firefox 13.0.1. My firefox.exe *32 process typically sucks up

from 150-200+ Mb, jacking my Physical Memory usage to typically 70-80%

I've disabled all the superfluous Firefox Add-Ons and Extensions (I

hesitate to delete them in case I need them). I periodically run PC

Pitstop 3.0 Optimizer to clear out temp files, Recycle Bin and

Internet Caches. After just now doing all this and recalling

firefox.exe *32, it's running at 156 Mb. Is this a normal appetite

for a browser? 



                   



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