Firefox vs. IE: cage match!

[Col. Newman]

a little of both. On the older laptops, they have a 'IE ONLY' policy on them. Firefox will install but won't work.

That's crap, so they blocked your ability to run it?

on the newer ones, you can install firefox, but our intranet site will only work with IE.

IE Tab

A few years ago, i tried firefox at home, and used it for 2 days before the memory l eak almost killed my laptop (when it takes 20 minutes to shut down, something is wrong) so i stopped using it because it wasn't worth messing up my computer.

Memory leaks aren't going to kill your laptop, the worse they will do is cause it to stop responding and you have to do a hard restart. Which is a pain on a laptop because you have to take the battery out and then unplug it. But yeah Fx 3 is a lot better.

I have IE7 at work and hate it and use it only when i have to. I have IE6 at home and use it when sites won't work with FF.

IE Tab

[Jeffala]

A good number of the Firefox memory leaks have been fixed.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Memory leaks aren't going to kill your laptop, the worse they will do is cause it to stop responding and you have to do a hard restart. Which is a pain on a laptop because you have to take the battery out and then unplug it.

WHAT??

I've never even heard of such a thing.

First of all, having a program eat up all the memory cannot cause your laptop (or computer) to stop responding. It merely gets.. very.. sluggish.. because it then uses the swap file (a file on your hard drive wich it uses as memory, but your hard drive is infinitely slower then ram so that's why it's sluggish).

High CPU usage can make an older laptop or computer stop to respond, when the processor has only one core (and no 'hyperthreading'). In that case, just wait till the program's done with whatever it was doing or 'kill' the program with the task manager (right click on your taskbar or use <ctrl>+<shift>+<esc>. With more modern cpu's (about less then 3 years old), your laptop or pc cannot hang, only crash.

But if it's an old one (or a cheap laptop) and it does hang, and you haven't got the patience to wait, simply press the power button for 4 seconds or so, and it will completely shutdown instantly. Then press it again to start it up again. That's a cold start, and you don't even have to get the battery out. But i wouldn't recommend doing that too often, especially when files were being written (you could lose the data that was being read or written at that time).

[Skydiver]

well,for me, it took 2 night of 20 minute shutdowns to stop using firefox. Although i use it now, 2. something, and it seems to be okay. Although, if i want to download the bsg podcasts, i have to fire up IE.

the main reason i use firefox is because IE doesn't show the tabs on the site. I don't consider it better than anything else. Just better at some things.

there is no 'best' browser. And once you get a 'best' the hackers will jsut mess it up

[Zelda fan]

well,for me, it took 2 night of 20 minute shutdowns to stop using firefox. Although i use it now, 2. something, and it seems to be okay. Although, if i want to download the bsg podcasts, i have to fire up IE.

the main reason i use firefox is because IE doesn't show the tabs on the site. I don't consider it better than anything else. Just better at some things.

there is no 'best' browser. And once you get a 'best' the hackers will jsut mess it up

it's more what you prefer

[Col. Newman]

WHAT??

I've never even heard of such a thing.

First of all, having a program eat up all the memory cannot cause your laptop (or computer) to stop responding. It merely gets.. very.. sluggish.. because it then uses the swap file (a file on your hard drive wich it uses as memory, but your hard drive is infinitely slower then ram so that's why it's sluggish).

Depends on you definition of stop responding.

High CPU usage can make an older laptop or computer stop to respond, when the processor has only one core (and no 'hyperthreading'). In that case, just wait till the program's done with whatever it was doing or 'kill' the program with the task manager (right click on your taskbar or use <ctrl>+<shift>+<esc>. With more modern cpu's (about less then 3 years old), your laptop or pc cannot hang, only crash.

What are you talking about?

[Morbo]

i am now rocking Firefox 3 with adblock and flashblock extensions on my 2Ghz iMac with 2 GB of RAM, and it is absolutely flying.

love.

[Trek_Girl42]

I can attest to that; Foxit Reader is good and *fast*. It doesn't support all PDF features, but if you're not using PDF for pre-press or other print-related stuff (in other words: only for viewing simple PDF documents), then it's the way to go.

On a somewhat related note; if you use Windows Media Player a lot, you'll be better off with the way speedier Media Player Classic. It looks like the old media player, but can play anything (provided the right codecs are installed on your PC). An alternative, VLC media player plays anything even *without* all those codecs (even DVD's), but the user interface is a lot less friendly.

Good to know about the PDFs.

I dumped my disaster of a PC for a macbook today (yay!), but gave up on trying to use windows media player for video months ago. It kept dragging down my computer to snails pace every. single. time. I used it. (it would take about five trys, disc defragmentation, and closing every other program running to get it so that the audio wasn't leaving the video behind. ) VLC on the other hand worked great once I started to use it, I definitely recommend it for anyone else who has had windows media player problems.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

What are you talking about?

When a program 'hangs', it takes up all available processing power and refuses to give it back; for example: when it's in an infinite logic-loop it can't get out of.

However, most modern cpu's have either 2 or more cores or a simulation thereof (hyperthreading), so any one program cannot take more then one full core (50% in the case of 2 cores, 25% in the case of a quad core) of processing power, unless the application has been specifically written for multiple cores (wich almost all consumer applications are not).

So your pc simply cannot hang. Not unless there's something seriously wrong with your OS installation or your drivers.

However, cheap laptops usually still have Intel Celeron's in them. Basically a technology from 5-6 years ago. So yeah, if a program starts to wind up, those can indeed hang.

[Col. Newman]

When a program 'hangs', it takes up all available processing power and refuses to give it back; for example: when it's in an infinite logic-loop it can't get out of.

However, most modern cpu's have either 2 or more cores or a simulation thereof (hyperthreading), so any one program cannot take more then one full core (50% in the case of 2 cores, 25% in the case of a quad core) of processing power, unless the application has been specifically written for multiple cores (wich almost all consumer applications are not).

So your pc simply cannot hang. Not unless there's something seriously wrong with your OS installation or your drivers.

However, cheap laptops usually still have Intel Celeron's in them. Basically a technology from 5-6 years ago. So yeah, if a program starts to wind up, those can indeed hang.

Actually programs still do hang because they just max out one core. If you think a program can't hang on a multi-core then you apparently don't use a computer that much. Because they do. Also most people's definition of hanging is when a program stops responding for any amount of time, it could be 1 second to indefinitely.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Actually programs still do hang because they just max out one core. If you think a program can't hang on a multi-core then you apparently don't use a computer that much. Because they do. Also most people's definition of hanging is when a program stops responding for any amount of time, it could be 1 second to indefinitely.

A program itself can hang, that's true. But your system cannot, since there's always a thread available for input/output and screen redraws.

Ofcourse, as I said, this is provided you use consumer software wich doesn't max out 2 cores.

[Col. Newman]

Prime95 maxes out all 4 of my cores and the system doesn't hang But yes I know what you are talking about.