On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 11:52:29 -0500, Paul wrote:

I can't say I've seen the same thing here.

Firefox on this machine (WinXP), starts in one second. While viewing
no web page content, memory consumption in Task Manager is listed
as 35MB. And, I've never had a freeze due to Firefox or Thunderbird.

Meanwhile, browser reviewers have all pointed out that Firefox is the
slowest to start. Not one has recorded a one-second start for Firefox on a
cold start and they used i7 processors.

To really have a freeze, you need to do some testing to classify it:

1) Press the shift lock key on the keyboard, and see if
the keyboard LED flashes. If the desktop manager fails,
sometimes that takes keyboard input with it. If the keyboard
LED responds to the shift lock, then you're not really frozen.

No response from the system at all constitutes a freeze, does it not?

2) The real test, is to attempt to ping the computer from
another computer. If you get a response, then the computer
really isn't frozen, and it's a GUI problem. Locking up
the GUI, is not the same kind of failure as completely
freezing it. If it happens regularly, consider looking into
Windbg over a serial port. On Unix boxes we'd just Telnet in
and do stuff. But I don't think that's an option on WinXP.
Maybe the equivalent on Windows, would be a remote desktop
session as a means to debug.

Another reason why your machine freezes and mine doesn't,
is the kind of AV you run. That can make a big difference
to apparent stability.

The anti-virus is McAfee and it's admittedly pretty ****ty. I blame it for
the fact that my computer doesn't wake from sleep sometimes (whereas it
works correctly without it installed). There IS a possibility that McAfee
is affecting both Thunderbird and Firefox's proper operation but it's sad
how neither IE nor Opera are problematic with it installed.

As far as I know, *all* the suppliers of browsers, rewrite
stuff. The main problem with Firefox, is for at least
some subsystems, they never ever seem to do a good
job of it (e.g. printing in Firefox - boo hiss).a

Firefox, for me, is not worth using without at least HTTPS Everywhere and
AdBlock Plus installed. If I were to discover that either of the two
extensions were the cause of Firefox's crashes and freezes, I would remove
them but Firefox would become useless to me. Malware generally comes from
ads and stolen credit card details and the like come from visiting sites
without proper encryption so I'm unwilling to use the browser without
those tools being installed. Opera has the same plug-ins and like I
mentioned before, is not affected by McAfee's potential problem-causing.
In addition to that, it loads immediately unlike Firefox.

--
Silver Slimer
GNU/Linux is a duct-taped form of Communism