Web Browser Comparison Test

[popowich]

I spent the last 20 minutes or so tinkering with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3 side by side. I'm on a Windows XP computer with 128MB memory. Yes, that's not a type-o, XP is really running on 128MB. It gets a little slow at times. I turned off the display of all unnecessary toolbars. They have the standard control, address bar and Google search box enabled. No matter what I did, using Task Manager to monitor the memory usage, Firefox always had the bigger memory footprint. I tried them both with 1, 2, and 3 tabs going to the same sites. At worst IE used 8.5MB less but at times it was using almost 20MB less. Firefox seems to load pages faster though. I think IE is somehow cheating and storing it's cache on disk or something. Draw your own conclusions. Since the Firefox is faster and has the spell checker I'm more than happy to keep using it instead of IE even though it seems to be using up more memory.

-Raymond

[Kaos]

I wish everyone would use FF since my local news site is now crashed almost totally with the new IE update! Can't seem to get it fixed. Ironically, I used to have to modify designs to work on FF...now it flip-flopped on me! I wouldn't have even known since I live on FF, use IE only to get into my server but my husband caught it 2 days ago now!!

[THERESA]

Ok Ray spoke too soon. FF has been officially uninstalled. A new tab was taking like 5 minutes to load. It was insane. The IE is working way faster. This pc is ancient, but better than nothing.

[esnagel]

Something's wrong w/ my IE installation. Whenever I open it, or open a new tab, it takes (literally) 5 minutes. I plan to take 2 days this summer, reformat my drive & do fresh installations of the software I actually use (Photoshop is messed up, too)

[Kaos]

I hate DOING fresh installs...but I love the clean drive afterwards! Except the PITA of reinstalling all the programs I do use, which I never realized how many of them there was until my last reinstall!

[popowich]

Ok Ray spoke too soon. FF has been officially uninstalled. A new tab was taking like 5 minutes to load. It was insane. The IE is working way faster. This pc is ancient, but better than nothing.


I'm not convinced that was Firefox's fault.

There is a Verizon Security Software Suite installed on here too, and I'm getting intermittent failure messages related to it being able to connect to their servers.

At the moment I'm having the same problem IE being happy with sites before displaying them.

-Raymond

[Raven]

I only use FF cause I was stupid enough to try the IE beta and it jams on me, so I never use IE anymore.

I wish everyone would use FF since my local news site is now crashed almost totally with the new IE update! Can't seem to get it fixed. Ironically, I used to have to modify designs to work on FF...now it flip-flopped on me! I wouldn't have even known since I live on FF, use IE only to get into my server but my husband caught it 2 days ago now!!

[Big Dan]

I think IE cheats because it uses some of Windows subsystems. If you remember back in the late 90s MS was sued for having an unfair advantage over Netscape due to IE being so closely tied into Windows. Windows scaled back on it a lot begining with Win 98 SP2 however I'm sure IE still uses some of windows exsisting processes to do it's work.

Firefox has to stand on it's own two feet with no help from Windows. I don't know what the sys requirements for FF are however Windows XP with 128 MB of RAM isn't the best idea. lol :D

[popowich]

I'm surprised but this thing is screaming fast now... at least for simple web browsing and e-mail.

-Raymond