Looking for a browser!

Hi,

I'm using Google Chrome. And boy does it eat too much ram my or what! It eats as much ram as any traditional IS when more than 2 tabs and extensions are opened and used. It's totally unsuitable for netbooks with 1gb ram and old machines with same or lower ram space.

Can anyone suggest me a browser for a 32bit system which is based on Chrome and provides the same level of security and fastness yet the ram usage is considerably lower than Chrome?

Best Wishes,
Iron Man

 

QtWeb.

 

Is the machine you're using it on actually low in memory? Memory usage is a good thing (to a point) - most of us have a surplus these days and rarely use it all. I rarely use over 35% of my RAM. I would have thought Chrome would be like FF in that it'd utilise memory proportionally to the available memory.

Which security features are important to you?

I don't know of any browsers that handle insecure plugins as well as Chrome in terms of the sandboxing - but they don't need to if you use Sandboxie and don't use insecure plugins like Java. Adobe Flash isn't a big deal in terms of security - infections because of zero-day vulnerabilities are pretty rare. Just read the statistics from Microsoft, or any taken from botnet servers. The Exploit kits that still even bother targeting Flash are using an exploit from 2010!

Try some portable versions of browsers and see which work best.

 

Thx guys. I'm back to my favorite - Firefox.

 

Iron?
Chromium?

Portable versions to try are here.......

IRON
http://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3962

CHROMIUM
http://sourceforge.net/projects/crportable/?source=directory

not used either, so no personal experience.

feandur

 

Based on Chrome or based on Webkit? As Webkit is the engine that Chrome use.

The security part might be harder though.....

 

Really? Now you're confusing me. I just wanted a browser as secure and less I mean much less ram eating.

 

Just out of curiosity, have you disabled the feature where it pre-loads web pages? I assume that would use more RAM, but I'm not sure.

 

Any browser that implements tab isolation will use more RAM than a single process browser, it's unfortunate, but better for the user overall.

 

Most systems nowadays have at least 2-4 GB of RAM I don't get it with this obsession about RAM usage

In fact, for me, the more RAM it uses the better as I know stuff is cached in the RAM and readily available at faster speeds when I need it

 

Well I did not get the chance. I'm now back to Firefox. Maybe someone else might confirm this.

 

Yes you're right. But Chrome uses insanely more RAM than Firefox or Opera with multiple tabs.

 

Many people also use 4gb ram 32 bit pc, 16gb 64bit pc and a 1 gb ram netbook.

I mean we also want to use the fast and secure Chrome when we are traveling in our netbooks and not only in our main powerful pcs, right? Well I do. But guess what- we can't. At least not with the habit of opening multiple tabs at a time in a browser and the use of AV/third party firewall or other constant ram eating software. Even if you use a low ram eating AV, those software eats up half of your ram and the rest Chrome gulps down.

 

There's definitely more initial RAM usage for Chrome. It can be significant.

But performance overall should be higher on a system that can handle it. And overall RAM usage should be lower in a single browser session that has lots of tabs opening/ closing.

 

Try to download Maxthon portable and see if you like it. I really luv it

 

Is it as secure, fast(okay maybe not as fast but close, I think Chrome uses resources to enhance it's performance) and much less ram eating as Chrome?

 

Agreed.

What are you talking about? Opening tabs increases ram usage. And of course ram usage is lower in a single browsing session with lots of tabs opening. My system shows blue screen saying it is deleting memory dumps and notifying physical memory is full, when I use two browser session with lots of tabs opening.

 

Both Firefox and Opera DON'T implement tab isolation, that's why. But I think "insane" is a bit of an overstatement surely, could you give us numbers?

 

Situation:
You open 5 tabs and close four of them.

With Firefox you retain some of the RAM from all 5 tabs (garbage collection helps with this.)

With Chrome you free all four tabs worth of RAM.

Over a session where you are opening and closing dozens or even hundreds of tabs you'll end up with a Chrome session that uses less RAM, even though initial per-tab RAM is more.

 

Oh now I understand. Thx for explaining.

 

CleanMem helps with that as well.

 

Try Opera, it's much lighter than almost any other full-featured browser. Not as strong on security as Chrome, but you already have two layers of sandboxing available (Sandboxie + Online Armor), so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

How light is opera exactly.

 

Please don't get started on that discussion. It's snake oil and not relevant to the original question.

Wolverine, with only 1Gb of RAM to go on, I'm afraid the situation won't improve all that much if you're wanting to use one of the "mainstream" browsers. They've just "grown up", for lack of a better term. Firefox may seem like it's not using as much, but over time you'll start seeing the results of what Firefox has been plagued with for years now which are memory leaks. You're honestly not going to get Chrome without initial high memory. Nothing else out there has the same security as Chrome.

 

This should help get an idea and is about as recent as I can find right now: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-chrome-20-firefox-13-opera-12,3228-12.html. In a nutshell, Opera has the highest memory use in this test at least.