Save ram usage with firefox addons?

iruul

At any one time I usually have my firefox running along with i-tunes, trillian, utorrent and thunderbird. Since firefox has addons that can replace the functions of these other programs, I was wondering if I could cut down the ram usage by getting the respective addons or would the ram usuage of firefox become equal to each individual program put together? Also, does anyone have any experience with these other addons?

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At any one time I usually have my firefox running along with i-tunes, trillian, utorrent and thunderbird. Since firefox has addons that can replace the functions of these other programs, I was wondering if I could cut down the ram usage by getting the respective addons or would the ram usuage of firefox become equal to each individual program put together? Also, does anyone have any experience with these other addons?

I don't think the torrent add-on for Firefox uses less RAM than µTorrent AND has more functions. Seriously, don't bother replacing that 260kB exe with anything else that has at least double the functionality.

Thunderbird, imho, is useless. Seeing as I've got my Firefox open almost always, and I use Gmail, I have no need for a separate email client, hence my advice is to dump that.

iTunes has no replacing add-on last time I looked around.

Trillian is awesome and you shouldn't remove it. Then again, this from a person using Trillian Astra, which is much slimmer, faster and prettier than version 3.1, and it can be run from within a browser, so yeah... that removes pretty much all of the RAM overhead of having 2 programs running.

As a last note, this was a problem with previous versions of Firefox, don't know how it is now, but some extensions rammed up the RAM usage by a lot, merely because they were poorly coded, or did not work that well with Firefox. So if you are going to try and find add-ons for all those programs you might even be using more RAM (with most likely less functionality) than with the individual programs. We won't know until someone tries though. Good luck.

Jen

It still surprises me today that people are actually using Firefox. Firefox is only on their second (third?) version while Microsoft's Internet Explorer is on their 7th version. If you do the math: 7-3=4. Internet Explorer is at least 4 times faster than Firefox. If Firefox was so great, how come it is never installed on any newly bought computers? I'll stick with my trusted Internet Explorer.

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It still surprises me today that people actually use Firefox. Firefox is only on their second (third?) version while Microsoft's Internet Explorer is on their 7th version. If you do the math: 7-3=4. Internet Explorer is at least 4 times faster than Firefox.

And Microsoft Office 2008 is 1910 times faster than Microsoft Office 98.

chaosof99

It still surprises me that people actually cook their food. People have eaten their food raw for thousands of years before cooking was invented and it rarely gave people hideous diseases and parasites.

Rochelle

I honestly have no problems with running various programs along with Firefox, and I use 2 gigs. Out of curiosity ,how much RAM are you currently using?

omegafinal

I personally don't use those addons. It's just the fact of turning a software into an all-in-one program urks me a bit. Not to mention, like Ro, I got plenty of RAM.

Neito

I only have 512 MB, and I never have problems with FF3 and memory usage, and I'm an extension whore.

Omnutia

It still surprises me today that people are actually using Firefox. Firefox is only on their second (third?) version while Microsoft's Internet Explorer is on their 7th version. If you do the math: 7-3=4. Internet Explorer is at least 4 times faster than Firefox. If Firefox was so great, how come it is never installed on any newly bought computers? I'll stick with my trusted Internet Explorer.

Did someone disconnect the logic part of your brain? Wow, just, wow.. an infinite source of comedy.

Neito, I know it sounds arrogant of me to say "Just buy more RAM" but going from 512MB to 2.5GB was amazing in terms of speed gained for money spent and will help just about all areas of your computer experience.

Neito

Neito, I know it sounds arrogant of me to say "Just buy more RAM" but going from 512MB to 2.5GB was amazing in terms of speed gained for money spent and will help just about all areas of your computer experience.

I'm not saying it won't. I'm just saying that FF3 is alot better on low memory systems.

trogdor9

Did someone disconnect the logic part of your brain? Wow, just, wow.. an infinite source of comedy.

I am a troll. Please do not feed me.

Omnutia

Is it so wrong to find a troll funny?

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Is it so wrong to find a troll funny?

Nothing, the first part of your comment however is insultory (PERFECTLY CROMULENT I SAY!), which is how you feed a troll. Go back to Sonic's class.

George Patches

It's just the fact of turning a software into an all-in-one program urks me a bit.

Seriously. What's the point of having an OS that can run multiple programs if you only run one?

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It's just the fact of turning a software into an all-in-one program urks me a bit.

Seriously. What's the point of having an OS that can run multiple programs if you only run one?

I want a motherboard with onboard flash on which there is a copy of Firefox and the proper video drivers. And of course drivers to connect hard drives for data storage. No more need to give up a few gigs of HD for an OS!

iruul

Normal usage with all these programs are fine, my meter shows about 60% of my 2gig ram usage. Just wondering if it would speed up some of my gaming if I condensed all my programs into firefox. Also, besides the hoped for ram lessening, its also nice to have all the programs I need in one place so I dont have to open up each program individually. Just clicking on the firefox program and having everything I need ready to go would be really nice. Before I start installing and messing around with stuff, here's the addons i'm looking at.

Mail Addon: Simple Mail I have multiple email accounts so I need something for this.
Thunderbird ram usage = 13,000 k
Torrent Client: FoxTorrent
uTorrent ram usage = 8,000 k (more with more torrents running)
Messenger Client: SamePlace Instant Messenger
Trillian ram usage = 8,000 k
Media Player: SongBird
iTunes ram usage = 37,000 k
Songbird is not an addon but its a firefox browser based media player. I dont know much about this but if it can replace my firefox browser and my itunes at the same time it would work nicely. I dont think that it supports addons though so I'll probably have to stick to itunes + firefox for now. Any shareable experience with this would be appreciated.

My currrent firefox uses about 140,000 k of ram. Excluding the media player, if firefox + addons is less than 170,000 k of ram then it would serve its purpose as I dont know how much extra ram the addons would demand. The functionality and features of the addons, though, are another factor as I havent any experience with them yet.

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Songbird is not an addon but its a firefox browser based media player. I dont know much about this but if it can replace my firefox browser and my itunes at the same time it would work nicely.

No it cannot replace your Firefox. Trust me on that one. For starters, tabs do not exist last time I checked. It used even more RAM than FF2 when I tried it, works an awful lots slower and has a generally messy interface imho. But I think the same of iTunes to some degree. (I dislike having stuff on either side of my browser window.)

Mail Addon:Simple MailI have multiple email accounts so I need something for this.
Thunderbird ram usage = 13,000 k

Gmail + filters? I think you can let Gmail copy all your mail from your other accounts by pop3. Seriously, Gmail makes pretty much every email client obsolete.

Torrent Client:FoxTorrent
uTorrent ram usage = 8,000 k (more with more torrents running)

I bumped into FoxTorrent a while back, did not try it though. But note how µTorrent needs more memory when you have more torrents running, imagine what FoxTorrent would need if you started putting more torrents in there. Yes, more memory. I don't think dumping the already small memory footprint µTorrent for a Firefox extension that only has the most basic of functions and probably and equal memory footprint.

Messenger Client:SamePlace Instant Messenger
Trillian ram usage = 8,000 k

That looks decent, fun even. Tell me how that works, I might dump Pidgin and use that, seeing as Linux is fail with Trillian Astra. ;-;

CHOIS CHOIS CHOIS

I had a huge problem with having to many add-ons back in the Firefox 2 days. Listen to me I sound like an old man. I stripped it down for the FF3, I pretty much have the weather add-on, download it all, ad-block, no script (on my Winbox only), and mouse gestures.

There is this awesome add-on I found the other day, It's called PicLens, It take full use of the core animation and core graphics API's on the Mac, to turn pretty much any picture site into a gallery.

edit: oh, Piclens is Mac only. Sorry.

Dkong

edit: oh, Piclens is Mac only. Sorry.

No it's not. I've used it on my windows computer before. It's pretty awesome, but it's also a pretty big waste. It's 95% eye candy, 5% functionality. That's no good.

Bronzdragon

I should probably mention that with foxytunes can control your music player from your web browser. (note it is not a music player by its self)