I had been using Chrome for several years on my now 9 year old Windows 10 (16GB Ram) Dell desktop. Performance degraded and I thought it was because Chrome was a huge memory hog.
I switched to Firefox a few years ago and performance was ok at first but then it seemed like updates were constant and memory was again an issue. I discovered that using Google Drive for syncing my desktop, which I continued using, was in part a big issue with performance. I dumped Drive and only use it thru my browser and things got better, but still with half a dozen tabs open, it was still bogging things down. I dumped Firefox and went back to chrome and performance was much better, and Google Chrome’s Memory Saver mode seems to have made a big difference. Some media outlets sites with all the garbage are using up to 700mb of memory!
Bottom line is I’m in need of upgrading to a Windows 11 computer with 32GB memory, (my current hardware not compatible with Windows 11) as support for 10 will be over in October.
What is your browser choice for performance, compatibility with most venues, security, privacy, and features?
Tips to improve performance without throwing more hardware at the problem?
Mozilla went through a period where they wanted to move away from Firefox to other things and didn’t give it the support it needed, but that focus shifted back a few years ago and I haven’t found a browser I like better than Firefox.
I am still using Firefox, and probably will never use another browser.
Firefox knows my passwords, I do not.
I am trapped, just as I am trapped with my bank because I am not going to add all of my information for bill paying manually to another online banking site.
Might have to consider adding some more memory to the antique computer I am using. Obsolete memory is cheap on Ebay.
All gmail accounts are open in Chrome tabs … generally 10 tabs going on Chrome for gmail, google calendar and google keep (all things Google).
All website and Amazon needs are opened in FireFox tabs … generally about 15 tabs (anything not Google).
SAS is on FireFox private window and anything Amazon that we want to look at without being logged in.
No Google drive … No Microsoft OneDrive. We have two in house NAS drives to work from (no memory issues).
Chrome and FireFox have been sending out weekly upgrades. Windows 11 sends out upgrades which we do weekly and there are two fairly large ones that happen near the end of the month each month.
If we forget to do a weekly update across the board, then the computer will get sluggish and both Chrome and FireFox will slow down. As long as we do the weekly updates, we have no issues with either browser.
We update Chrome, then FireFox and then Windows 11. We make sure we look in the Advance area of the Windows update to catch the computer driver updates and any Windows 11 update that is considered optional. We do all of our Windows 11 machines on the same day … one at a time just in case we run into an unexpected issue. Our Windows 10 machine … we no longer update since the update last year that yielded our engraves useless for 6 days until we figured out the issue and reloaded the machine (the engravers are older and need Windows 10 32 bit to work).
We have both Chrome and FireFox set to snyc which means we can sign into any machine and have the same saved bookmarks available.
When either Chrome or FireFox gets sluggish, we know we need to do the updates and we are fine.
EDIT:
One other thing on sluggish browsers … when our batteries get old in either the keyboard or mouse, the browsers seem to be unresponsive or erratic.
I’m a chrome fan. It is a memory hound but you need to plan for that when you buy your machine.
I have 11+ chrome windows going at any given time and after a few weeks of the laptop being on and never shut down it does start to bog down and then I shut it all down and restart and back to normal / fast.