Web Browser – The Power Application that does it all

Web Browser – The Power Application that does it all

6 Comments 05 March 2007

My web browser is by far the most resource intensive application on my laptop. At the time of writing this post, pressing ctrl-alt-del reveals applications currently running on my laptop and how much of my laptop’s memory they’re each using up. This is what it looks like.

Firefox = 179,600 k (179mb)

Google Talk = 16,448 k (16mb)

Skype = 10,552k (10mb)

Explorer = 7,144 k (7mb)

etc

Ok, granted, I’ve got a lot of browser plugins, do lots of web development work and sometimes go a little tabbed-browsing crazy, but is it normal for a web browser to be so memory intensive?

I wonder, to all of you reading this, how much memory does your web browser use up and compared to the next most memory intensive application.

Isn’t the web browser the power application that does it all?

Have you read these yet?

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Miguel dos Santos

Miguel dos Santos - who has written 148 posts on Web AddiCT(s);.

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http://www.jasonbagley.com JBagley
Firefox does love eating memory, but on my machine, SQL Server 2005 takes the cake. I’ve seen it get up to 1.5GB.
But it seems to be able to handle its memory management quite well, because I don’t ever notice my machine getting sluggish when its running, or while I’m working on other things.
http://www.morethan.co.za Miguel dos Santos
Wow, I don’t even have 1.5GB memory on my laptop, but SQL Server is not really a desktop app.
I’m using MySQL for my WebDev work, which uses minimal memory, not even in the top 5.
But I must say, I don’t experience much lag in my laptop, even with firefox munching soo much memory.
http://www.ifikile.co.za azola
mine looks like:
Visual Studio 2005 = 185 704 KB
firefox = 102 480 KB
SQL Sever = 85 696 KB
IE = 29 636 KB
i notice a lag when building a solution in Visual Studio
http://www.morethan.co.za Miguel dos Santos
Yikes, so there’s one other heavy browser user out there on 102mb.
I can understand Visual Studio and SQL Server as they’re development tools rather than end user applications.
http://justinhartman.com Justin Hartman
On Debian my firefox (iceweasel) uses the most memory as well. To be exact 9% or 50MB while the next highest is…. drumroll…. thunderbird at 2.8% or 14MB.
http://www.morethan.co.za Miguel dos Santos
TYFYC. I’m using gmail so email applications don’t factor into my laptop resource usage, but I think this all points to the fact that, with all the web services and applications mostly freely available nowadays, who needs desktop applications? Well unless you don’t have broadband access.