Given that I use a netbook whenever I travel (fits everywhere, weighs nothing), investing a bit of time and effort into simplifying things can pay out big time. My latest optimization involved changing the web browser from Firefox to Opera…and I can but recommend you all to make the switch.
My MSI Wind U100 netbook is more CPU- than RAM-constrained (I have 1500MB); which means that a web browser’s CPU consumption is the key deciding factor when it comes to system performance.
For me, Opera has performed significantly better than Firefox. Lags when scrolling are now non-existent, even when in power save mode and on the most complex pages!
Unfortunately, this luxury of speed comes with a significant price: memory usage. Irregardless of operating configuration, I have found Opera to consume about four times the memory of Firefox…finding 600MB of RAM assigned to Opera is something I have seen quite often.
As these devices tend to be too limited to run two complex applications at the same time, however, this is less of a problem than one may initially assume. For me, the best netbook browser thus is Opera.
Of course, all those of you who use a 2GB development machine with a dual or quad core CPU are better advised with Firefox, as it will leave more RAM free for other tasks…
Feedback, anyone?
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I haven’t yet found Opera to run as sweetly on my Wind U100-432, even though I souped up the RAM to 2g and put a better hard drive inside.
Perhaps I should reload the most current version and give it a ride.
(And, oh, btw, “irregardless,” is a double negative. It’s “regardless.”)
H
Hi Harold,
thank you so much for talking back!
Have you tried to increase the size of the RAM caches?
With compliments
Tam Hanna