Fattening fox

I have, albeit briefly, fallen out of love with my favourite browser - firefox.  We had a wonderful affair going back many years when all was perfect.  From when it initially poked its head through the holes left by the thundering internet exploriphant, which had terminally wounded the previous king of the jungle - netscape. 

Through thick and thin, when ff refused to load bookmarks or refused to put them in the correct locations, to losing all the passwords in a minor tiff!  Through all of that we patched up and roared on.

But with the growing popularity of the add-ons things took a slight turn for the worst.  Was it a badly written meal ff had digested, causing it to go a strange colour of blue?  No just a badly prepared theme i'd stupidly installed.  But its initial speed was slowing, on some occasions even taking longer to load a page than it took ie to load and be ready.  Blasphemy! 

The last time - when the camels back finally broke - ff was still loading up long after i'd loaded up chrome, checked my banking balance the weather and what was on at the local cinema before it sputtered onto screen.

What was going on?

A quick look through the trusty task manager brought up a few home truths.  Chrome with five tabs open was taking up only 56MB of ram. Firefox on the other hand (whilst still in its loading phase), was chugging through over 1.3GB of memory; before settling down to a relatively wieldy 215MB. 

The only thing that had changed was the inclusion of more add-ons (figure 1). New add-ons that are recommended by someone you know which they just can't live without, you just have to try.  That other slightly strange but winking at you add-on from the pages of the latest magazine to hit the door, or viewed on a site, all offer time saving, enjoyment having wasting more time than sense hours of fun. The time had arrived to ruthlessly remove all those juicy helpful helpers.  To return the browser to a state of speed and efficiency - you might even find it crashes less frequently too. 

Figure 1. Add-ons

Sigh, what to remove and what to keep...

• The all-in-one sidebar I regularly use for its unabashed over helpful organisational abilities. 
• The latest add-on was Tab Mix Plus, which looks good adds to the functionality but I can do without for the time being.
• Scrapbook is good but somewhat duplicating Google notebook so that will have to go.
• Fire gestures - mouse gestures certainly require that onboard.
• Firebug haven't really used it so that can go.
• As can answers since I now use ubiquity for so many things.

...and on you go, through each add-on and saying yes or no.  Once you've reached the end of your list, you can restart firefox.

 

Firefox now consumes just 165 MB of memory to open before settling down to a modest 152MB. By just removing 5 add-ons the start up time has dramatically improved, and as seen below its memory footprint is now more manageable.

 

The image following shows how the new look slimmed down version looks:

 

So if firefox is causing you problems it may more than likely be an arrant add-on.  The best thing is to start the browser in safe mode:

Start menu -> all programs -> mozilla -> mozilla firefox (safemode)

which will bring up the following window:

Simply check the disable all add-ons option and click the continue in safe mode.  If that works and it starts okay (best to wait before the wonder of watching it zoom along is lost), then it is with great probability your add-ons.

Go on a helpful worthwhile mission: the add-on decluttering mission, and watch ff fly.

A wee bit of foresight?

Previously to the machine giving up the ghost and requiring yet another fresh installation, I had a few 3d and world design programs which looked rather good, if a bit frustrating to use. As anything new, skewed to the right of complexity invariably is!

I reinstalled the OS and tested (for an hour) to ensure there was nothing underlying possibly causing the problems; i.e. faulty memory cards, hard drives overheating, fan not cooling the processor down sufficiently, stupid operator, electricity spikes.

But the whole thing remained remarkably stable and zipped along nicely. 

Stage one over.

Then went onto stage two. The process of reinstalling all the programs that I deemed necessary, from the DVD I luckily managed to burn, prior to the disaster.

So on this occasion, Instead of suffering a day or two installation woes, everything - which also included SP2 & SP3 as well as the latest drivers for peripherals, components and up to date software packages - were placed into a folder on the windows xp image disc, and it all installed in just under three hours.

With data safely backed up, but more importantly copied to verified disc media, the computer received its late summer cleaning.  Eschewing the necessity of hurling it into the nearest river - which can sometimes bring debilitating consequences to bear, on your computer.

A good basic program, which is also relatively inexpensive, hails from ashampoo called Burning Studio 7. It does everything it says; burns iso's, creates bootable disks, etc., etc, and all for the princely sum of £9.  Although do wish a good open source  alternative comes along, eventually.

Vistatanic?

Eight months of listening to the pitfalls and woes my flatmate has undergone since alighting on the good ship Vistanic, has been an experience.

From screaming about dodgy pixels (okay Toshiba's fault), to screaming at the UAC thingy. Having the OS install the same piece of software three even four times, when a gadget's been plugged in. To bits of equipment that work happily with xp and say they're vista compatible or certified - having to be taken back to the shop, because they refuse to work without crashing the system - even with updated, upgraded, uplinked drivers.

A feeling of smug resignation forced me to bite my tongue and not to repeat that well worn mantra of I told you so.  As I kept beavering away on my ancient relic, which has kept trudging along through out it all, quite nicely.

What was that about the Vista experience.... ah yes, best avoided. With windows 7, singularity or black hole 2 on the way; shall avoid getting my hands dirty with the Vistanic, by having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it!

I'm happy with linux and happy with xp. Perhaps if something more stable, with an extra helping of rose-tintedness comes along, i'll think about giving it a try. 

It also shows there's a bit of hope for us lemmings, as on this occasion manufactures have been forced into a bit of backtracking, by offering people the old OS over the shiny new one.  Against the wishes of the behemoth .

"All that glitter's isn't gold," holds very true in this case.  If there has ever been a case for a trading standards rap, both knuckles of this organisation should be swiftly done for mass hoodwinking.

"Psst, a quick word.  If it's something pretty you require with more hand holding than granny could give, then go for a mac. For something more stable and more reliable than a mars rover, then head for something linux flavoured or if you're happy with it, stick with XP."

Love & Disaster: CES

I, like many other technologically minded souls, have been waiting with heightened baited pulse for the advent of this years CES show. Especially as the peddlers of Doom & Gloom Incorporated Limited, have been doing the rounds with regard to credit crunches, country collapses, and soon to be mega-disasters, coming along to add the final touches to finishing us off!

Putting all that to one side, it was good to see that companies are still out there doing their bit to give all of us, easier happier life's, whilst also parting us from our cash; but I might have mentioned that particular earlier.

So after the first day let's get down to it, and in no particular order...

Loves
On the software side it has to (especially when I get a faster computer with a graphics card that properly works - very disappointing ATI-AMD, very disappointing) be SpaceTime a wonderful free piece of software... actually much quicker if you pop to this site for a sublime description, but with 3D Vista Aero style flying things happily working, albeit slowly, on my ageing XP PC is straightforward, easy to use and definitely another line added to the do I really need to upgrade to Vista? list. Also, having a 22inch plus wide screen monitor would be of help.

Then on the hardware side, Panasonic's 150inch plasma tv, drool and I don't care who sees me... Might have to go down that ten bedroomed house with 30ft walls route after all. Sigh!

Hates (or if that is to harsh, dislikes)
Do I really need a bulky table costing over $5,000 so that I can zip and zoom into whilst dragging things around. Not at this time, and no it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it's from MSoft.