PC Mechanic, New Article

Live Example Of Firefox 4 Memory Problems

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

It’s well known that the Firefox has had memory-releasing issues ever since version 2 of the browser, and with 4 it doesn’t appear that the problems have been resolved.

I want to make clear that Fx isn’t a bad browser, but it does eat up tons of memory that requires restarting it frequently whereas you don’t have to do that with IE9 or Chrome.

Mozilla has tried to pin the blame on add-ons for the slow performance of Firefox, but seriously, Mozilla, we’re not buying it. The browser is a memory-munching monster and we all know it.

A pretty damning example of how bad Fx is when it comes to memory use is that I came across a Reddit thread that stated, “If you go to [this] web site, the browser will explode in memory use and/or crash your computer.” I have 8GB of RAM in my system so I tried it out.

See for yourself what happened:

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Live Example Of Firefox 4 Memory Problems

Find Out Where Your Disk Space Has Gone With Space Sniffer

Posted: 10 Apr 2011 07:00 AM PDT

Hard drives have become big and cheap enough that we really don’t have to worry about file storage space too much anymore. However, if you find your space is becoming sparse or like to keep your disk nice and tidy, a tool which may be helpful is the free utility, Space Sniffer.

While there are lots of utilities out there which utilize the proportional boxes to represent file sizes, Space Sniffer focuses on simplicity:

Start a scan process and see the overall situation. Bigger are the elements on the view, bigger are folders and files on your disk. You need more detail on a big folder? Just single click on it. The selected element will be detailed with its content.
Need more and more detail? Keep selecting elements and they’ll discover their secrets to you. Need a larger view of a small folder? Then double click on it, and it’ll zoom to the full extent of the view.
If you need to understand why no more free space is left on media, keep following bigger elements. Maybe you want to focus only on particular file types… ok. Just type the file type on the filter field (example: *.jpg) and press enter. The view will react and show you only JPEG files.
[... lots more functionality described ...]

However, the simplicity approach does not mean it lacks features (just follow the link and you will see).

Space Sniffer is free and portable, so if it sounds like something you could use, give it a try.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Find Out Where Your Disk Space Has Gone With Space Sniffer