Google Chrome again ... What are the alternatives?

[Polar Bear]

I really do need a different browser.   I seem to suffer on a fairly regular basis a sudden but crippling performance issue with the pc.   Removing Chrome and it's insidious tentacles, restarting the machine and then reinstalling Chrome fresh resolves the issue.

This is such a waste of time.   Why don't Google sort this shit?

Advice on alternative browsers welcome please. 

[dat]

I use Firefox but the Microsoft edge browser isn't bad on W10. On Linux I use midori.

[ian]

I'm not sure what those 'insidious tentacles' are. Chrome is speedy here. If you don't like Google, you can use Chromium.

Admitted Safari is blindly fast and becoming my preference (I know, Mac), but it's still nice to occasionally have all my bookmarks available on a non-Mac device, so I've not entirely moved over, and ready access to some of the Google stuff I use is nice.

But no problems with Chrome. Crashes once in a blue moon.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Restarting Chrome usually fixes slowdown problems. Chrome, run for a while, uses up a lot of memory. That's a side-effect of all the caching (which is a side-effect of all the convenient fast access to things).

No performance issues here, either.

The insidious tentacles don't really make their presence felt unless you use a gmail account and log in. I find the benefits (synchronised bookmarks for one) hugely beneficial.

[Polar Bear]

I do use a gmail account.

[Afasoas]

You can try deleting the contents of:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data
This basically obliterates all of the data Chrome has cached on your machine. If you are using a lot of browser plugins, try turning them all off and one by one over a good period of time turning them back on.


Personally I use firefox, although it's lack of tab process isolation can be a bit frustrating. A heavy script running in one particular tab seems to affect the whole browser. It's preferable to running Chrome that seems to eat CPU and RAM by the time you have a few tabs open.

[Sea of vapours]

I use Firefox and only use Chrome for a couple of extensions not available on Firefox (Stravistix,notably, a rather good Strava extension). I only have Chrome open when using it so it doesn't have the opportunity to grab too many resources. Synching bookmarks is available on Firefox, as is synching open tabs and various other things such as history (natively, without extensions). Microsoft Edge on W10 is fine as a basic browser but lacks much customisability in the form of extensions, or did last time I looked. 

[Polar Bear]

I'm not an extensions user.   

That file is a useful tip.  Thanks Afasoas.     

[Kim]

I use Chromium, with a handful of small extensions.  It's the least-worst browser since Opera went to shit.  No performance issues that I've noticed, other than the occasional site with badly-programmed blingy adverts running amok (this sort of thing can be greatly improved with an extension that suspends idle tabs - I have on occasion traced high levels of mysterious network traffic to a background tab on barakta's machine with The Guardian endlessly streaming video in it).  The latest iteration of my desktop machine is ludicrously overpowered, though.

I use Firefox for the occasional site that doesn't work properly in Chromium, and have real Chrome and Opera on standby for testing.

[Biggsy]

Internet Explorer nowdays works well as a basic browser with little drain on Windows because it's largely built in.  I use Pale Moon and Chrome for the sake of certain extensions, otherwise I'd be happy with IE on any Windows 7-10 machine, or Edge on 10.

[Polar Bear]

Yes.  well apparently i already have explorer on my machine but it doesn't show or want to work.   I try to download IE but it always says that there is a newer version of IE on the pc already.   I've not got he tuits to resolve that little conundrum.

[zendog]

http://www.dummies.com/computers/operating-systems/windows-10/how-to-find-internet-explorer-in-windows-10/

[Polar Bear]

Win 7 here. 

[TheLurker]

I've been using Opera for the last few months on Win 7.  It's *mostly* OK, which is about as much as I expect from sw these days.

[ian]

I confess the only extension I use is Flashblock on the grounds that anything displayed using Flash will promptly run away with all your processing cycles and make merry with them. That said, Flash seems to enjoying it's own prolonged funeral in favour of less demanding HTML5 players. Killing autoplayed video is probably a good thing to speed up any browser.

I'm not convinced by running millions of extensions. Keep it lean. And kill unneeded tabs (they're in your history), the number of people I see who have dozens of tabs open. The more shit you have, the slower it will go.