Alternative to Chrome

[jimmyjazz 46249]

I've used Google Chrome (Windows 7) for years, but after a forced update a couple of nights ago, it's just ridiculously slow, and (according to Norton) is hitting the hard drive constantly.  I went into settings, tried to make things better, no luck.

What's a good alternative?  I don't stream anything, I don't download anything.  No, really.  WaPo is about my limit for salacious content.

Is Firefox the answer?  Gah, this is annoying.

[Celery Man 21004]

I switched to Vivaldi hoping it would be a bit less of a memory hog. I’m not sure it made much of a difference there and I ended up getting a pc with more ram (work computer) but I ended up sticking with Vivaldi. It’s pretty customizable and took a bit of fiddling with the settings to have everything arranged how I like it (sparse), and now I really do.

[52-80 19271]

Yes Firefox on both mobile and desktop are good, functionally speaking

Neither are light anymore....Firefox will hog as much memory as chrome does

 

[jimmyjazz 46249]

Is the continuous disk access an artifact of my computer not having enough RAM?

[zork 629]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

Is the continuous disk access an artifact of my computer not having enough RAM?

there are indexer programs that seem to be big hogs.  if you can figure out which process is hogging the resources you can get them to stop loading on start up.  run the task manager by c-a-d, then sort by disk usage.   if you make it small enough you can watch the big offenders while you do your surfing, then search what the process is in googles.  i don't recall what i had to turn off a few months ago with similar disk resource hogging attributes.  

[Texaus 377]

No help with the browser, but yes to looking at your startup items. Almost none of that shit is necessary. Type “msconfig” into windows search bar, select startup tab, uncheck all that shit(google if you don’t know what an item is).

[retread 2951]

I switched from Chrome to Opera several years ago b/c Chrome kept slowing way down. I think they're built on the same/similar technology, So settings, etc. are in similar places.

Edited August 29, 2019 by retread

[zork 629]

superfetch was one that I stopped from loading. there was another with index or indexer in the name.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=100+disk+usage+windows+10&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS773US773&oq=100%+disk+&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0l5.18808j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[52-80 19271]

Nuke all of your extensions and plug-ins and etc.  Turn off browser syncing/account login.

 

Even if there are no performance gains, out of principle and privacy concerns, you should reduce dependency on google and switch to firefox intsead

[immamac 43215]

edge on windows 10 is going to be chromium based and is pretty dang fast for some stuff.

[jimmyjazz 46249]

I did stop some things from starting up automatically but apparently I didn't get the big offender(s).  I've been viewing the task manager for performance, I'll try it again.

[torre 1286]

11 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

I've used Google Chrome (Windows 7) for years, but after a forced update a couple of nights ago, it's just ridiculously slow, and (according to Norton) is hitting the hard drive constantly.  I went into settings, tried to make things better, no luck.

 

Was the update a Windows Update or Chrome update ?

If it was a Windows Update,  you may consider uninstalling to see if the update was the culprit.    You may also want to install an earlier version of Chrome or Chrome Canary which will will run compatible with regular Chrome to test.

 

 

[jimmyjazz 46249]

It was a Chrome update.  I'll look into Chrome Canary -- thanks.

[tokamak 6443]

Firefox is putting out a good product these days. I switched from Chrome about 3 months ago and have zero complaints.

[dcbc 14538]

You mentioned Norton in the original post.  I'd suggest dumping that and using Windows Defender (Formerly MS Security Essentials on Windows 7).  I always found Norton to be a very intrusive, weighty, bit of software.  Microsoft's built in security suite has been working well for me for years. 

[Hornius Emeritus 12491]

I switched to Brave. Whipass fast and doesn't track me around the net.


https://brave.com/

[MrPhlegm 3413]

I switched to Brave. Whipass fast and doesn't track me around the net.


https://brave.com/

Yep

[mycox 582]

6 hours ago, Hornius Emeritus said:

I switched to Brave. Whipass fast and doesn't track me around the net.


https://brave.com/

Yep, and a built in ad-blocker

[TwiceHorn 31582]

On 8/29/2019 at 11:05 AM, tokamak said:

Firefox is putting out a good product these days. I switched from Chrome about 3 months ago and have zero complaints.

Yep, it does seem to have a similar memory "footprint" to Chrome, maybe slightly less, but is definitely less of a general purpose resource hog.

What fascinates me to some degree, is what a fucking hog Chrome is on Windoze and OSX, yet an entire operating system based on it can fly on rinkydink hardware.

Edited September 4, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Hornius Emeritus 12491]

40 minutes ago, mycox said:

Yep, and a built in ad-blocker

Yep. And especially fast on mobile. Like noticeably faster.

[PilotsError 2325]

Sounds like you should just get a Chromebook.

[William_Cannon 86]

Jimmy, keep us posted. I recently found the same thing on my wife’s computer but have been too lazy to fix it.

By the way Windows 7 is supposed to be end of support in January 2020.