By w4kaz, created on 2009.09.26 at 05:34:44 | last changed on 2009.09.25 at 16:44:08 |
A bit of divergence into the realm of Internet browsers.
I have been moving from browser to browser, since the days before the internet and their initial introduction. I have maintained my ground-floor AOL account(1992?) for email continuity, because it has been disseminated so far and wide. But it must be over ten years since I actually used the AOL software, having switched to Netscape very early on. Internet Explorer in its several iterations has never been high on the favored list, except that most e-commerce is geared towards being compatible with it.
[aside: I wonder what a full set of AOL disks would bring at auction on ebay as a curiosity? Enough to cover postage?]
The problem is really the ten year old desktop I normally use for web-surfing. Just too cheap to buy a new computer for checking e-mail and web surfing. But the hardware constraints and limitations have brought some performance issues to the forefront as time has marched on. I suspect the main consideration is the 512MB memory limit. [yes, it IS that old] Obviously, I’m about five years past time to upgrade. Alas – I still see no “need”, even with the price of computers now down to, or below, the price of a nice suit of clothes and a good pair of shoes. Desktops cheaper than iPods!….almost.
Anyway – I used Netscape rather than AOL’s software(go figure!) for several years and then parted ways with Netscape in favor of IE, mostly due to compatibility issues with the common level of HTML being used at the time. I then adopted Firefox early on, and have seen its level of performance degrade over time as new features have been added. Safari was an improvement over Firefox for a short time, but quickly began showing signs of memory and CPU bloat.
Overall, Opera has always been the fastest of the lot. It was also always the least compatible with certain websites that used wonky HTML hacks, or sites that stretched the envelope with latest-greatest HTML techniques.
IE8 has recently re-emerged as a better choice than either Firefox or Safari on this brain-dead CPU. On the kids’ faster gaming computer, I still prefer the look and feel of Firefox, and its bloat is not noticeable on a 2.6gig CPU with 3gig of ram.
But here on the old-n-busted box, the latest three releases of Opera have been quite an improvement over the other lot. I’ve grown to like some of the look and feel of the Opera browser, and it is still showing the fastest load times of the four currently installed. Safari now sucks so badly on this box, it is virtually useless. It is kinda sucky on the fast box now too, but usable.
But the surprise is that IE8 is now the second best performance wise, and is actually better than Opera on pages with Flash content. (Not “good”, but “better”)
I have IE8 set to run in “compatibility mode”, and it still has the occasional hiccup, but overall it now beats out both Firefox and Safari. Perhaps the Redmond nerds caught a hint with the smashing success of Vista.
Curiously, Opera is also still able to run on Windows 98 and WinME, so it makes a useful tool for a dinosaur set up for shack use.
Opera is pretty snappy in the Ubuntu partition too. The Opera version 10 compatibility on any platform seems quite good too.