mkey

OK, I've been thinking about this for a while and I'd appreciate any and all insight.

Currently, I'm on my office XP Pro box. This windows installation, on my default settings, takes up 84MB of RAM as represented by the task manager. I have 2GB of RAM on this C2D machine, but that's besides the main point.

Now, after observing the task manager (as questionable as those memory readings are) this is what it states:

• Firefox with 6 tabs open, 564MB combined. That's actually relatively good, it bloats up during the day
• Thunderbird 100MB. One open tab, I like it compared to ye ole OE, however I can't understand why does it need 100MB of RAM at all times. I guess both of these applications come from the same rotten core.
• Google Drive Sync 57MB combined. Now, what the hell for does this application need that much RAM? It resides in the tray, it has a menu and a very simple window and keeps your files synced. I simply don't get it.
• Organize is a small application I created, sort of a combined calendar and phone book. It's a 16kb exe, taking 3MB of RAM so I'm assuming that amount contains all the mirrored system dlls and whatnot. Since my util doesn't load anything extra.

As far as FF goes, I tried looking for a more efficient browser, but none were to be found (as long as one wishes to keep some of the today standard features, that is.) They are almost all based on commonly used engines and as such consume more or less the same amounts of RAM.

I understand my total RAM usage is about 900MB out of 2GB, which should be OK. But where do these few programs (3 of them, total) get the nerve to take up about 8 times as much RAM as the whole goddamn OS does? Is more RAM really a solution or just a remedy for piss poor coding practices?
I get it that nobody sane in this day and age is going to write a full blown browser in assembly or whatnot (like I did with my little organizer) but can't middle ground be found? Is there any sense of decency or pride left in the development world? I simply don't get it.

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Arklon

If you must use FF, use Waterfox. Won't help in the RAM department, but it runs much faster.
Edit: Err, scratch that, unless you happen to be using 64-bit XP. Pale Moon (another alternative build of FF) would be another solid choice that would actually run on a 32-bit OS. It's not quite as fast as Waterfox, but still a lot faster than FF.

With the rising popularity of garbage managed languages, rampant RAM consumption is only gonna get a lot worse, not only due to the overhead of the framework but that they also allow far less competent programmers to enter the field. My friends who work as programmers (very good ones too) have been complaining more and more in recent years that you have these .NET programmers and the like that are completely worthless, constantly breaking things they (my friends) have to fix, making messes they have to clean up, producing extremely lazy code, often just plain slacking off and not doing anything which of course they have to fill in for, etc. One of them said they're seriously considering abandoning programming as a career choice altogether because it's become such a joke.

mkey

That's just the insight I needed, thanks.

I don't have to use FF, but it's still the best option for me, kind of.

Google Chrome crashes for me every half an hour or so, I guess it's mostly flash related but nevertheless. Feature wise it has everything I need (mostly user script support plus addons like last pass and some option to sync my shit; for this very reason I'm looking for a single browser solution for both home and work usage.)

Maxthon seems like a very solid choice, but it doesn't have user script support. They're maybe planning to introduce it.

I may try Waterfox at home, on x64 7. Have also used pale moon (haven't noticed any real time improvements), iron, slimbrowser, qupzilla, k-meleon... they are all either sharing engines (and at the same time their issues) or are plainly out of date.
I guess there are only two solutions - either start using text based browsers or start coding one of my own.... yeah, I'm shit out of luck.

__________________
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