I like Firefox Web browser, but ever since the release of 1.5 versions it has become a memory pig in a big way. In previous versions of Firefox it handled memory differently. These days it’s a full-blown hog!

Some say it has memory leaks, and other say that the “memory leaks” are not really memory leaks but instead are the result of “features.” LOL ! What kind of “feature” requires 300MB of memory?

In another example, when you minimize the browser it would swap all it’s real working memory (available via RAM chips) to virtual memory (the disk-based swap file). This freed up a lot memory for other applications to use. And programatically speaking, swapping a Windows-based application to disk involves only one line of code!

Things changed though. Firefox allocates memory to itself and keeps right on going and going and going. As a result of its glutony, over time when keeping the same browser instance open and using multiple tabs (maybe about 10) Firefox’s overall memory usage (actual memory and VM swap space) grows to well over 300MB! What the hell?!?

You can see this for yourselves. Open up Internet Explorer and Firefox at the same time. Then do a bunch of Web surfing in both browsers, open up numerous tabs, surf to the same Web sites. Then open up Task Manager and take a look at memory usage comparison between the two browsers. You might be surprised, shocked even.

Firefox’s memory usage grows to such extremes on my system that even when I close open tabs it doesn’t help much. In fact, Firefox uses to much memory that my system slows to a crawl. Sometimes I have to shut down Firefox just so my system will stop acting like a snail.

Firefox is a great tool. But they really, really, really, need to do something about it’s huge memory appetite. Opera browser is starting to look very good to me these days. And that’s something I wouldn’t have guessed would happen.

The bottom line is that I shouldn’t have to go out and buy a new system with 2GB of memory just to use a simple Web browser!

Maybe all this memory eating is due to Firefox extensions. I don’t know. I only have a few loaded. The only ones I see that actually do anything in realtime are ForecastFox, CustomizeGoogle, and GreaseMonkey — but I don’t even use GreaseMonkey, I just have it loaded in case I decide to use it. Anybody have any insight?

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