r3fresh

Firefox Dampened, Flock Soars

I switch between two different computers depending on what I am doing. I use my Macbook for editing media, listening to music, and email and I use my Dell desktop mainly for writing blog posts and school work. I have Firefox downloaded on both computers and it used to be my favorite browser, until now.

When using Firefox on my (Vista) Dell PC it can barely make it ten minutes with out freezing up. My Dell is only a couple of months old and it has plenty or RAM and processor power to run Firefox. I then thought it might be from the extensions and themes I had downloaded, so I delete the five extensions and the three themes I had downloaded in hopes for success, but like my athletic ability, it wasn’t found. Internet Explorer started looking good.

On my Macbook, Firefox behaves very differently. Instead of locking up or randomly shutting off, it uses large amounts of memory. This isn’t a problem when I’m just using Firefox, but when I have Microsoft Word or any other application open, the slow down begins. The problems have seemed to subside after I maxed out the RAM (to two gigabytes) on the computer. After reinstalling it, updating it, I decided to give up on the Firefox situation.

There are a bunch of different browsers that I had tried, but didn’t like. Opera, was great, but not what I was looking for. Heard of Shiira, tried it, deleted it. Then I remembered Flock, a browser built using the Firefox framework and was being toted as the “social web browser.” I had used Flock before, but it was in it’s very early stages of development and it was filled with bugs. I decided to give it another try and downloaded it again in hopes of a successful alternative browser.

Flock is my new favorite browser for both OS X and Vista. It has only frozen a couple of times when I used Vista and it doesn’t use nearly as much memory Firefox did. What I really like about Flock is the blogging integration. I can write a post (online or offline), Post it, or save it for later. Flock also has Flickr integration and a robust RSS reader, comparable to Safari.

The Flock browser has become my favorite browser on both my Dell and Macbook. I am surprised Flock hasn’t become more popular because it is just as good, if not better than Firefox. To try out Flock, go to Flock.com.