Methownet BB

hi all,,thought i would post on here sometimes it helps with diagnostics.... i've noticed that goggle chrome was acting very quirky of late,,freezing up,,generally slow response etc etc... at first thought it could be the pc or internet speed issues or that its windows 10 which i've heard microsoft is not supporting anymore [i would think theres still alot of folks still using windows 10]..a few days ago it totally froze up[even the cursor] and thought maybe the pc was toast i had to power out..[its a laptop] it rebooted ok and the cursor was working normal,i decided since i had mozilla/firefox already in the pc i would transfer over to that system..i've been using firefox for a few days now and it works great,,absolutely no problems....i'm reluctant to even go back on goggle chrome and may remove it from the pc..usually when theres a problem it could be widespread? have other folks had similar issues with goggle chrome??? feedback is always helpful [please post] thanxxxxx william>>>tell

Google Chrome is famous for using up a huge amount of a computer's "brain power" (RAM, essentially its short-term memory) compared to other browsers. If your laptop is old or doesn't have much memory, Chrome can easily cause the whole system to freeze up. When you rebooted, that gave your laptop a bit of a clean slate clearing out stuck data and made things run better right off the bat. Generally, Firefox is lighter of your system's resources, so it's a good choice to keep things runny smoothly. If it's working well for you, there's really no reason to switch back.

That said, if you have a lot of extensions (ad-blockers, mail clients, coupon finders, toolbars, etc.) installed on your browser, or have a lot of programs on your computer running at once, that will also cause your computer to run slower and possibly freeze. For older or more basic systems it's best to install only what's necessary, only have open/running what you need, and restart at least once a week.

Best of luck!

thanxxx spencer for the thoughtful response ...yes its certainly a older pc i've had this 17inch toshiba laptop since 2013 and its worked superb now almost13 years..i will reboot it more often than i regularly do and will stick with the firefox....which is working fantastico....being a senior i'm not as tech savvy as the younger generation,,i will have my tech savvy neighbor/friend go thru the pc to check on things and go on his advice..and if its a good idea to delete goggle chrome will do so and will clean up what we can on this older pc and keep it going for more time..i used firefox some years back on my first pc and it worked just fine and now will stick with it.....thanxxx for the advice...excellente'........willam>>>tell........enjooooy the spring*******

https://www.reddit.com/r/opengl/s/pWx3pFUdEy

I just saw this article and thought of this thread. Basically, a recent update to most web browsers means that some of the hardware in older laptops isn't used any more. This would make browsing be slower and use more CPU than it did previously, so this could explain what you're seeing.

I'm a diehard Firefox fan. I use some of the add-on security features, too. And my default search engine is DuckDuckGo.

Having said that, I will point out that some websites don't work well with Firefox. Their programmers are too lazy to include compatibility. So occasionally I'm forced to use Microsoft Edge. It is a freebie with Windows. You are stuck with ads and it defaults to Bing for searches. So far, when I have tried to change my Edge search engine to DuckDuckGo, it has ignored my changes.

My 2010-ish Toshiba was dog-meat slow and I thought it was some background software holding things up, but I could not find anything in the tests. Replaced the stock hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD) and MAN did that speed things up!

On the bad news side, it decided to eat batteries like gum drops. It could kill a replacement in a day. I had to resort to only using it on power with the battery removed. Finally picked up a used ASUS and installed an NVME drive that makes it fly. Less than $300 in that.

Bob