Google Chrome saved me $4,500 | Hacker News Reader

Google Chrome saved me $4,500

25 pointsandrewstuart23 comments

So my machine has been struggling for a long time - it's a Macbook Pro 2.33Ghz 3 gig RAM 320gig/7200RPM HD. I bought it in 2007.

I push the machine pretty hard, with ten to fifteen applications running, tons of tabs open for my web browsing along with multiple user accounts simultaneously logged in which I switch between.

The whole machine is sluggish and I often have to wait seconds for things to happen. Nothing is snappy any more.

The main problem is that Firefox is constantly bumping up towards 100% CPU and chewing huge amounts of RAM - around 1.5 gig.

So I decided that its time for a new machine - a new Macbook Pro with 8 gig RAM and a 256gig SSD. I specced it all out on the Apple store and the price - ouch - was close to AUD$4,558. Whatever I thought - it's my main work machine, I really need something that's fast enough to get my daily work done without grinding and chugging.

In the meantime I decided to switch to Google Chrome which I had been using a bit on the side for a while and it seemed pretty quick. So I totally switched to Chrome for OSX and shut down Firefox for the last time.

Suddenly - a snappy machine again! Even with large numbers of tabs open my web browsing is fast. Even better, CPU utilisation is generally low (often under 5%) and RAM is usage low too (often under 150MB).

I've got my fast machine back! Everything is working better, everything is more snappy. Applications switch fast, web browsing is snappy, and everything just works.

I feel a bit sad about leaving Firefox behind - I want to support it and I've used it for years. I don't want to speak ill of this old friend.

So the incentive to buy a new machine has gone. My 2007 vintage Macbook Pro is still doing the job well. I'm sure I'll need a new machine sometime soon but right my 2007 era Macbook Pro does everything I need, at a good snappy pace. Thanks Google Chrome!

FYI: Your RAM usage is not 150MB, that's only for the main process. Each tab is it's own process and has it's own RAM utilization as well as CPU utilization.

Yup. If I have about 40 tabs open in Chrome, especially with some Flash videos or JS-heavy sites, Chrome can easily chew up a a gig and a half of memory and slow everything to a crawl. There is no magic bullet.

Bumping my memory up to 8GB ($130 from crucial) helped a lot though. No more paging issues for now even when running photoshop, firefox, safari, chrome, zend studio/rubymine/eclipse (yes, I use vim too, but it uses practically no memory)

esp if flash is involved chrome can get really mean... not saying other browsers are better. besides that chrome is insanely fast on osx. i compared it with win and its a bit snappier on osx. for whatever internal reasons.

Try putting a SSD in it. It'll bring back a lot of "snappiness". Hands down best hardware purchase I've ever made.

I suggest purchasing a SSD for your 2007 MBP. You can then use the SSD drive for when you eventually decide to upgrade to a new computer.

I've heard Apple's SSD drives are expensive and there are better options, like http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extr...

You can also keep the hard drive and replace the optical drive using several brackets available on the market.

Depending on which MBP you have, you may even be able to fit a 12.5mm SATA drive, which means you could potentially squeeze in a 1TB drive.

Completely agreed, even down to describing my SSD as "the best upgrade I've ever purchased" to friends.

I have a non-unibody MBP from the 2007 era that I now have almost zero interest in upgrading; if it weren't for the fact mine is showing wear-and-tear and other improved hardware features (unibody construction, battery, display, improved headset port, audio-over-Displayport), it would be zero interest, since my 17" is now more than fast enough for everything I do. :)

I did have a look at SSD's for my machine.

The downside is that the model of MBP that I own has a SATA interface that is limited to 1.5Gbps and the research that I did showed that the best SSD's are faster than that, so I'd be wasting some of the power of the SSD because the interface is slow.

The other problem is that installing a replacement hard disk in this machine is a nightmare. I've installed thousands of hard disks into computers and this was the hardest and most scary - I had to bend circuit boards and components to get a new 320GB/7200RPM disk in to replace the old 120GB/5400RPM, hoping that nothing snapped. Apple must have tried hard to design a machine with a disk that hard to upgrade.

Given those two issues I think I'd probably buy an entirely new machine and give the old machine to someone else in the family.

First, even if it is SATA 1.5Gbps, it's still a great upgrade, and you can take the SSD with you to your next machine - the SSDs Apple is shipping in the MBPs are not very good, and you'd be better off buying one separately anyway.

Second, which MBP do you have? That definitely doesn't sound right - I have a non-unibody 17" and it only takes about 5 minutes to take the top off; it's mainly just 12-18 screws, and the 15" looks identical to me (unless they changed how it's put together later on):

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-MacBook-Pro-15...

The big win with an SSD, even with a 1.5Gbps interface, is the seek time. It's amazing how much faster simple things like "du" are with an SSD vs. a spindle.

Seriously, if you can at all stomach opening your laptop again, a 120GB-240GB SSD will make it seem like a brand-new machine. For the first week or so, you'll start ten applications at once just to watch how they all come up with no bounces on the dock. :-)

I just upgraded to an SSD in my Macbook Pro. It was easy and has a huge impact.

Full details and benchmarks written up on my blog: http://blog.wpeterson.org/2010/12/05/macbook-pro-ssd-upgrade...

Overall about 5x improvement.

I had almost the same experience. I had a 2007 MacBook Pro and one day dumped Firefox for Chrome. the difference was amazing.

I eventually did upgrade to a 2010 MacBook Pro/8GB/SSD. It came put to just under $3k after taxes. Expensive, yes. But the speed difference is amazing. It completely changed my work and productivity. Using a computer 8+ hours a day, it is easy to forget how much time you loose a day/week/month waiting on app to load, files to open, etc. The 2010 MBP (with SSD) is the nicest machine I've ever worke with.

I would suggest using FlashBlock or equivalent on Macs. (Gruber even suggests uninstalling Flash, chrome has builtin Flash I guess.)

Also, keep an eye on the new Firefox 4 betas, they are much snappier.

That said, it is true that Webkit based browsers are currently the best choice in terms of speed and stability.

Opera is good on Windows, and has advanced on the Mac UI wise, however it is not as stable as Safari on my mac.

Had you already uninstalled Flash, or were you running Firefox with Flash installed?

Uninstalling Flash seems to have had a salutary effect on my Safari sessions, though I can't speak to Firefox, having given up on Firefox years ago for anything except the occasional CSS/JS debugging session.

No I haven't removed Flash. Yes I had Flash installed.

I had the same problems too, had the same firefox profile since the 1.0 days almost, and had my history set to remember it for 1 year, my profile dir alone was over 2GB. After starting a fresh profile everything went back to pretty much normal (by firefox's standards)

I use Chrome on OS X as well and have disabled the Flash plugin, and use AdBlock and WidgetBlock Chrome extensions to make browsing faster. The only time I use Firefox is to view Flash.

I'm curious if you tried firefox in safe mode or totally removed your profile if firefox would still big down your system?

I’m curious on my end too, are you running Windows?

Firefox is nothing but trouble for me on OS X, but it’s great for my main testing environment on Windows (at work). The latest 4 beta is a lot better, but I’m fairly dependent on OS X’s system-wide text services.

Buying new hardware is never a solution for a bad user experience, at least not with the laptop you own.

You could probably achieve the same result by dumping a bunch of the plugins you installed in Firefox.

I had the same problem with firefox. Safari/Chrome use fewer resources on my macbook.

Opera is also fast. Has a built in RSS reader, ad blocker, Html,css,js inspector and many other built in features. The newest (not out yet) has stacked tabs.

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