Why are people still complaining about programs that use under 100mb of RAM?

H

Headbust

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2003
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I was just searching for some firefox tweaks and came across billions of threads around the net about this browser only uses 40mb of ram compared to this browser using 80mb of RAM.

I mean its been in the back of my head for awhile now, why are people even caring how much a browser uses? It seems like 95% of home systems have at least 2gb of RAM and what its matter if our browser used 200mb of RAM. :confused:
 
because people dont like it, people even thought they have far faster machines and MORE ram, want everything slimmer and faster! slimmer and faster! why people put down vista so much, cause it uses your system

the problem is though with something like fireefox that went from being fast snappy and responsive, it took a crap, for me, in v2 when it almost double and trippled in ram usage once you get afew tabs open.

i dont get it either really, why buy ram if you dont want anything to use it...
 
Because of the 15 other apps that are running that have also been needlessly coded to use triple the RAM they need.
 
Because alot of times, the higher ram requirement is only because the new software version looks different or is otherwise bloated with useless crap, without adding any real improvements or new functionality.

As I understand, Norton finally stopped making resource hogs, and slimmed down their newest version...........of course I used to use the corporate version anyway - much better IMO.
 
Firefox, hah. I got version3.0 and after using it for about a half hour it starts gobbling ram and running at high CPU times.

Ram usage adds up from a bunch of programs. If companies actually cared about putting out a quality product, RAM usage wouldn't be nearly as high. Buying more RAM should NEVER be the solution.
 
There is a reason for this. RAM is cheap and programmers are expensive. Were as 5 or 10 years ago limited system specs required careful coding, the huge amounts of RAM in current PC's make it unneeded.
 
Yah, I don't get the people that compliain about memory non-stop or background services that use half a meg of memory and 0.005% cpu.

I tend never to close anything out that I might use. Visual studio, word, and firefox are pretty much open the entire time my PC is up, even if I'm gaming.
 
even when i had 4G of ram i only ever got close to using it having a TON of things open, Tf2 minimized, photoshop, IM's, IE with many tabs, xfire, ventrillo, cd cover makes, nero and such and i barely hit 4G

now i have 8G cause it was cheap and i barely even break 4G still using a ton of things!


i understand coding may have gotten sloppy, but dont blame developers so much as management that wants things out now to start seeing cash come in...

FireFox used to be dam fast and efficient but with new features and new configs it is getting slow and bloated, i had to go back to v2 something for my g/f computer that has a p4 1.7 and 512 of ram cause v3 was taking about 3 mins to load, pegging the cpu @ %100.
 
The other day my firefox was using 950MB of ram. That's just ridiculous right there. Even after closing all the tabs, not only did the ram usage reduce, but I watched it slowly jump up to 1GB. That's disgusting.
 
Now that is when it crosses to the point of just being an error somewhere, probably either a poorly coded java or flash app or an extension. I've never seen FF use anywhere near 1gb of memory.
 
My FF usually hovers around the 500MB mark with 100+ extensions. Right now its at 2GB as I'm opening tonnes of pic. +I set the ram cache to 2GB :)

still got 2.3GB to spare out of 8.
 
Because, some people like to multi-task more than others.
Currently, I have three Firefox browser open with 8 tabs each, 10 terminal session windows, 4 spreadsheets, 2 word processors, Tomboy for note taking, Ekiga softphone, Skype, Pidgin, Wireshark, IE6 through WINE, KeepassX, virtualized Windows 2000 and XP for testing few apps, and Ubuntu 8.04 server edition, and Debian without the X. I might have to launch 2003 top of this if I get a tech support call. Also, my server is running about 8 different server OSes. That is why some people are stingy with ram. It is never enough.
 
requiemnoise said:
Because, some people like to multi-task more than others.
Currently, I have three Firefox browser open with 8 tabs each, 10 terminal session windows, 4 spreadsheets, 2 word processors, Tomboy for note taking, Ekiga softphone, Skype, Pidgin, Wireshark, IE6 through WINE, KeepassX, virtualized Windows 2000 and XP for testing few apps, and Ubuntu 8.04 server edition, and Debian without the X. I might have to launch 2003 top of this if I get a tech support call. Also, my server is running about 8 different server OSes. That is why some people are stingy with ram. It is never enough.
Click to expand...

yup, i am getting like this, with VM's being used their goes a good chunk of ram right there, i am so used to closing anything i am not using, but now that at home i have 8G of ram i leave everything open with no worries, but at work with 2G (soon to be 4) i find myself running out all the time due to memory hungry programs.
 
Headbust said:
I mean its been in the back of my head for awhile now, why are people even caring how much a browser uses? It seems like 95% of home systems have at least 2gb of RAM and what its matter if our browser used 200mb of RAM. :confused:
Click to expand...

I could probably list 50 people that I know off the top of my head that still have only 128-512MB of ram. For them, a browser can't be too greedy or leaky. I could gather more than 50 given some time if I really wanted. So, it might be 95% that have 2GB or more in one area and a lot less in another.

Now, you might want your browser to use the same *percentage* of total ram no matter how much ram you have. That way, if you have a lot of ram, the browser can cache things like crazy and make browsing faster.

On the other hand, if you feel your browser can work fine with 80MB of ram when you only have 256MB, you might feel that there's no reason you personally need it to use more than 80MB just because you have 2GB or more memory. That way, the memory can be used for other things.

There's also something to be said about really memory-efficient software. I don't care how much memory you have, if your browser is taking up 1.5GB and all you did is load a few pages with nothing outrageous on them, there's something wrong. If the browser wants to cache that aggressively (assuming it's not a leak), it should be user-configurable.
 
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