Firefox 7 Upgrade - One Day Later

In a sentence, So Far So Good.

I was having considerable problems lately with Firefox 6.  When I load my morning web pages, all 170 of them, I would get into "the middle" of the list somewhere and notice that things were bogging down.   It would slow.  Then it would just "stop".

I would have a shock as I would now be looking at my desktop and a "helpful" bug reporter saying that it was time to restart my old session or just start over from scratch.   Since I would typically be looking through quite a few web pages all at once in a programmed order, of course it was time to restart.

Now granted it is only One Day Later, but so far so good.  I downloaded and upgraded Firefox 7 by going to their www.getfirefox.com link and clicked on the helpful green button.  I then launched the upgrade by clicking on the program from the download manager window within Firefox.   That is to say I clicked on it around 3 times since I got three windows starting.  Why I did that was because Firefox 6 was getting sluggish again and it was preparing to crash.  I don't have proof that it was going to crash but it "felt like it was". 

Not very scientific I know.

Having gone through my 170 pages plus other open links and a day of emails and other web silliness I can say it feels much more stable.  

Again, not scientific, but I was used to Firefox 6 crashing twice a day during that exercise.  

Firefox 6 was better than version 5 at returning memory to Windows 7.  Version 7 has returned more memory so that when I am through with my pages and I've spiraled down to the usual 20 tabs I keep open, I'm well below 1GB of memory in use.  Specifically I'm watching Firefox 7 use between 15 and 35% of the machine, 840Meg to 880Meg of memory on a Core 2 Duo.

I promise not to be so tech for my normally non-technical reader base.

Bottom line is that it seems like a solid improvement - so far.  I run a lot of Firefox extensions while the browser windows and tabs are up.  A weather watcher called Forecast Fox, an ad blocker and some others are always running.  I can't live without "AdBlock Plus" and highly recommend it, and I have to check radar before the dog walk since I go far enough away in that half hour walk that getting soaked is a regular occurrence in the Wet Season.

I am happy I did it.

Some will insist on using Internet Explorer or Chrome.   I would uninstall Internet Explorer if I could, it just feels bloated and pudgy and with every version that comes out it introduces new annoying tweaks to the way things work.   Chrome may run faster but I have questions whether it isn't phoning home to Google every time it runs.  It's like driving through a part of town you don't know with Chrome - you're always looking over your shoulder. 

If it works for you, either of them, enjoy.  For now, I'll stick with Firefox.   I am just more comfortable with it, I know what to expect and I'm enjoying the improvements.   It's free and a painless upgrade - and it may actually be "pushed" out to you users of earlier versions of Firefox.