I compared the memory usage of Firefox with Opera by opening the same websites for both. Interestingly Firefox memory usage is at least 50% more than that of Opera. Is there a memory manager for Firefox?

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The "memory leak" of Firefox is a feature. It's the way that Firefox caches pages. Opera is able to do the same caching as Firefox with much less memory. I don't know why this is, but yeah... Firefox is a bit of a hog when it comes to resource usage.

Firefox retains memory it's not using as kinda a cache, which isn't a bad thing (speeds it up)

can enable the trim_on_minimize so you can have a slower firefox and less memory usage.

people keep using the "it's a feature" excuse. Yes the instant fwd back does use mem, but not THAT much. Firefox has many memory leak problems and they're being fixed bit by bit in each successive version.

I think it's fairly good at what it does... doesn't slow my PC down one tad bit, and I do a lot of multitasking. Most of the time I have around 20 tabs open.

Hahaha. Ever thought of becoming a politician?

Yes it's resources hungry, no it's not "faster" than Opera....
Theres no memory leak but some extensions may have memory leaks, the cache feature use lot of RAM sure, you can disable it but it may slow down browsing speeds.

I just close Firefox from time to time. I've had Firefox jump up above 200MB's before. Right now it's sitting at just under 90MBs.

Firefox is more unstable than any Internet Explorer version I've ever used though. The good thing is it can restore your session if you've written a nice long post right before it crashes.

"The 'memory leak' of Firefox is a feature."
"Yes it's resources hungry...."
"Firefox retains memory it's not using as kinda a cache, which isn't a bad thing (speeds it up)"

At what point does someone realize the hypocracy of what one says? Vista uses memory and it's a bad thing.
How can one promote the excess memory usage of a program yet condemn memory usage of an OS?

I agree with linx05. Firefox promoters may do well as politicians.

I'd rather the OS use all the memory, i want it 100% used all the time, no hypocrisy on my part.

And the large memory usage isn't a leak, if it was a leak Firefox wouldn't be able to free it (i can get Firefox down to 6MB of memory usage, if the 150MB or so of memory usage was a leak that wouldn't be possible)

I want mine to use a little as possible so that very resource intensive applications can start up and run faster/better without having to put all the contents from the RAM to the HDD (taking up time in the process).

Well, i didn't exactly mean that, although it sure sounds like it in hindsight.

At the moment i have around 500MB of my ram not being used, but it's also showing a bit of pagefile usage, why is it even using the pagefile at all if i have half my physical memory unused?

i want everything to use as little as possible, and save my memory usage for my apps.

Well i am using opera and FF and have opened this page and opera is using like 19 MB with 0% CPU and FF is using 2 - 5% CPU + 88 MB memory.. I just opened IE and it is using 18 MB with 1 - 2% CPU..

Now if i can jut file google toolbar and informenter for Opera FF is history..

Yes it does use up resources it even makes my UI lag if i move a window "OVER" firefox then it like lags behind the window if you know what i mean like i move it it lags behind a little bit. but not over firefox then it doesn't and i multitask ALOT!

I got 1.00GB Ram, 3.06Ghz HT P4, 5200 GFX Card.

April 9th im ordering a Dual Core 2 Duo 3.0ghz, 7900 GFX Nvidia Card, 2.00GB Ram, its time i upgraded seen as my pc graphics, the processor is getting on abit now and i had my pc for quite a while now.

firefox is perfect.

Firefox is a bit heavy, it usually runs up to around 50MB on my system. But its speedy and doesn't really slow my system down. So no complaints from me.

Nothing is perfect guy

nXqd

Unused memory is basically wasted memory.