All of them nowadays has at least a dual core (read: Intel core 2 duo) processor powering their computers. But hey, but that doesn’t include all of them! still people are using Pentium 4 pc’s. Pentium 4 (or similar single core processors for that matter) has a single core, which means it only has a single processor core capable of computing a single thread and a process at any given time. The resident OS uses multiple cpu scheduling algorithms and shares the cpu between the system software & the application software. The cpu jumps from one process/thread to another so swiftly we don’t even notice. Hence these cpu’s are incapable of handling multi-threading efficiently. noe coming to the title of this blog post, Google Chrome uses multiple process for its uptime. Every single extension, every single tab has its own process running so that if a single tab/extension crashes it won’t affect the Chrome as a whole. While that is a good thing that Chrome won’t crash due to a bogus extension, it also means that it needs system resource.

The above screenshot has been taken in my desktop begin powered up by an good old Intel Pentium 4 single core cpu clocked at 2.8Ghz. As you can see from the black boxed part of the screenshot of the Windows Task Manager, which even while running the bare minimum applications (even the default Windows 7 basic sidebar has been disabled) look at the resources consumed by both the Firefox and Chrome. While Chrome runs multiple chrome.exe’s, Firefox runs only a single instance of firefox.exe. Now as mentioned earlier in the blog post, in a single core pc as Chrome uses multiple process it slows the pc down. Hence if your computer doesn’t have a dual core cpu, do not run Chrome. Offcourse, you might need Chrome for reasons like its auto synchronization of bookmarks & passwords or due to the fact that you’re a Google fanboy. I really can’t do much about the later, but you can always export your bookmarks to Firefox. But still you’ve to login into every single site separately from Firefox, but hey that’s just once. After that just creat a Firefox sync from the options and from then only everything in synced including your open tabs and passwords using SSL encryption with the Firefox servers. The next time you login from another PC, or if you reinstall/install a new OS, all you have to do is to login to Firefox sync again. Firefox is also created a new one password to rule all type system called Persona recently, which might also be integrated into the Firefox browser & mobile os in the future. Other reason to use Firefox even if you have an state of the art workstation or a touch enabled ultrabook, are as follows

• You’re a pro anti Googler

• You’re a Microsoft fanboy but still feel that IE10 sucks

• Firefox extensions & themes

• Rapid release cycle

• Alpha/developer testing, Beta, and stable versions to choose from (i’m on the beta update cycle which is currently Firefox 20.0 whereas the pre-beta is now running at Firefox 22 at the time of writing)

• Rock solid stability apart from the occasional restart now notification annoyance from the poorly coded old plug-ins

• Its from a non-profit organization, i.e, if you’re a Open Source fan (and also note the fact that Chromium browser is also an oss from which Google has made the Chrome browser)

• Huge user base and contributors base means that Firefox browser is here to stay. It won’t die on you when you wake up tomorrow morning.

• If you’re already a user of Thunderbird email client or a user of Firefox’s mobile OS.

• In case you’re a power user who’ll miss miss Chrome’s flag (chrome://flags) and if that is preventing you from migrating to Firefox, do keep in mind that Firefox’s about:config is always there at your service.

So there it is, the merits of Firefox. Now its time for the demerits 

• For no apparent reason the extensions like buffer & gmelius etc are unchecking themselves every single start. And also i have to manually switch to the theme Glass – black by jmouse888 which by default goes to the Firefox default theme. I’ve tweeted to Firefox the link of this and lets see if someone there reads the whole post and responds on this.