Power of your PC :: how fast pages load

Ok, I'm sitting here with my old dell laptop.

P3 700
256mb RAM
SLOW stock 10gig HD

Very little resource usage... Right now with firefox open and everything else going, i'm using 132304k

I run bandwidth testers throughout the day at random times and get between 1.5 and 2.8mbits down on my connection.

I have my options here on OCF to show 100 posts per page in a thread. When I click on a thread, I end up waiting about 20 seconds or more for all 100 posts to be displayed... (i go to the thread immediately, but only 14 or so posts will be displayed, i have to wait and just keep hitting page down to see the rest as they get displayed)

Ok when I'm in the lab working at school, i'm on an oldish 2.4ghz intel with 512mb ram. Connection seems to be the same speed as at home. The thing is, with a default FF install (no plugins), I can click a thread, it waits maybe 2 seconds, and goes to a fully loaded 100 post page... WTF?!?!

Does page rendering really rely on PC specs? Or are my plugins to blame? DRIVES ME NUTS!!!

Easy way to check: add another install of Firefox on your computer with no plugins and browse around OCF.

Use that bandwith thingamajig when you download ocf pages, not at any other time since that's meaningless for the measurement of the current task.

It's probably the plugins. I ran firefox with the "TabBrowser Extensions" plugin... just installing that adds 2-3 minutes of load time to my daily comics.

Now I use Opera, which is preconfigured for most of the tab settings I like by default, no plugins or extra configuration. It depends on what you like though.

Log in as another user, download and run "pocket firefox"... it'll run independantly of your current install (and by logging in as another user, it'll have a different profile path & won't load your user plugins). If that's faster, then it's the plugins.

The speed of your processor does have a direct effect on the speed your browser can render webpages. Pages like forums are often quite lengthy and complex to render, check your CPU usage while loading a page.

I also use the adblock extension for FF. That increases page rendering time considerably because it parses all the HTML searching for adds and cuts them out before rendering. Disabling this extension speeds up rendering considerably.

firefox is notoriously slow in page rendering compared to IE or operal.

Also, unless you have plenty of ram and a lightweight antivirus (antivir or Nod32), then that's also killing it for you.

Of course, faster CPU means faster rendering, however, a P3-700 should be more than up to the task, and I have one to prove it.

css takes alot longer to load in firefox than IE or opera for sure!