Are popular web browsers too heavy for a 256mb ram computer?

I don’t think any currently supported browser can run with that little memory.

It should run fine if you don’t use any or too many addons/extensions or have too many tabs open.

I just tested out google chrome and firefox. Without any tabs or addons/extensions, Chrome only used up 43mb and firefox used 36mb.

I’m assuming you’re running windows 98 or xp. Your operating system requires 64mb ram (minimum) and 128mb (recommended). Knock at least 20mb off for anti-virus/firewall and various other programs. You will either max out or may even have a little free memory left over.

Rdram? I’ve never even heard of that.

God damn, get a better computer, its 2012, seriously, XP shouldnt even be running on that thing.

If you want ao good browser for a peice of shit computer get seamonkey, its a super lightweight cousin of firefox, and works great on shitty old computers, i used it before i had my own good one. Also never use chrome, its fucking garbage.

@XOIIO This is Rdram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRAM

Chrome’s minimum is 128MB. Opera is recommended is 256MB but will run on 128MB. Safari’s minimum is 256MB. Firefox reccomends 512Mb but may work with less. You may have problems with sites that have lots of images and playing video etc would be out imagine.

Of course there is an easy solution to your problem. Buy more RAM

I handed down my Dell Dimension 8100 to my kid. I upgraded it to 1.2 GB RDRAM. It runs Firefox fine. Kaspersky antivirus is killer, though.

I would just use a older version of Firefox. I would suggest the latest 3.x branch. I used to run it on a old windows 2000 laptop with 64megs of RAM without any real problems.

It will be slow since it will use the hard drive for “swap” but if you don’t keep 20 tabs open and don’t install 50 extensions you should be fine.

Ahh rambus ram., never heard it called rdram

god damn, rambus ram?

RDRAM has a really efficient architecture for transferring huge chunks of data, compared to DRAM. Nowadays, DRAM is incredibly fast, so beats RDRAM through sheer speed. i.e. used to be Boeing 737 vs Toyota Corolla. Now it is Boeing 737 vs Bugatti Veyron.

Even if you could run something lightweight like Chrome, the webpage content will easily kill your speed. RDRAM seems pretty easy to find, i found Amazon selling 256MB sticks in packs of 4 for $32.

Dunno if that’s a worthwhile purchase though. You can buy the lowest end cheap-o e-machine from Walmart for $300 and you’ll be in heaven compared to what that machine’s got now.