Technology Why is Google Chrome being a bitch for me?

[dilla]

I occasionally use Chrome just to switch it up a bit and have been using it fine until the last week or so.

I'm running it on a 13" MBP and when I go to a site with a lot of pictures, the temperature sky rockets from about 41C to close to 70C. That's pretty freaking hot for a laptop. I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't site-specific. On this site, it's ok, unless I go in the funny pictures thread. Not sure if format matters or if it's the .gifs and not the jpgs. I dunno. Someone also experiencing this?

I go on RGF a lot as well and with more users rocking avatars and gif sigs, it gets ridiculously hot then.

For reference, Firefox does none of this. What am I doing wrong?

 

[masta247]

It's not Chrome's fault. It's your computer. Whenever your processor's usage goes high (and that's what happens when your browser loads a lot of content, especially flash content if you're on a Mac) it gets hot. That's actually pretty hot for a laptop, yes. But if there's Intel CPU inside it's still a safe temperature for it. It usually gets very bad if it goes above 80.

By the way that's also what happened on my IBM laptop but it's old and rocks a Pentium M processor which can stand temperatures up to 100 degrees. Whenever I was browsing a demanding website, playing a demanding game etc. it would go up to 90 degrees and that's hot.
I decided to lower processor's voltage so now it usually doesn't go higher than to 65-70. However it's not the easiest nor the safest thing to do unless you really know what you're doing.

Usually laptops restart themselves whenever hitting a critical temperature and that's usually 5-10 degrees below the maximum your processor can take.

 

[dilla]

Right, but Firefox runs it at a cool 32C....on my bed....the same pages.

 

[masta247]

That's strange. Check out task manager or and observe CPU usage. What OS are you running?

 

[dilla]

Snow Leopard. 10.6.4. Seems to be on pages with .gif files, like signatures and avatars on forums. It's even worse than watching a video, which takes it to 140F or so. .gifs bump it to 160F+.

 

[Ristol]

My computer is good with most things but horrible with Chrome.

 

[masta247]

Snow Leopard. 10.6.4. Seems to be on pages with .gif files, like signatures and avatars on forums. It's even worse than watching a video, which takes it to 140F or so. .gifs bump it to 160F+.

Well, Chrome seems to be designed for Windows. I've heard about issues with Chrome and Macs.
Basically they just ported the Windows version, cut some of its functions out and experience tells that many programs ported that way have their performance issues and more and more apps are done that way.

There's a problem with good browsers on Macs. As far as I hate Safari probably it's the safest way to go on a Mac. Opera and Firefox are also good and waaaay more comfortable to use than Safari.

 

[dilla]

Well, Chrome seems to be designed for Windows. I've heard about issues with Chrome and Macs.
Basically they just ported the Windows version, cut some of its functions out and experience tells that many programs ported that way have their performance issues and more and more apps are done that way.

There's a problem with good browsers on Macs. As far as I hate Safari probably it's the safest way to go on a Mac. Opera and Firefox are also good and waaaay more comfortable to use than Safari.

Considering Google now uses Macs and Linux and doesn't allow Windows anymore within the company, I find all this hard to believe. Maybe because it's just been enacted, it'll take some time. But it's hard to imagine it being like this for long.

 

[exrp765]

I life safari over firefox...

firefox is slow on my computer n safari isnt... maybe its just me

 

[dilla]

Nah, Safari just doesn't cut it for me. I'm very well grounded with Firefox as my primary browser and Google Chrome a distant second. Safari and Opera, I just haven't spent enough/any time with them.

 

[masta247]

Considering Google now uses Macs and Linux and doesn't allow Windows anymore within the company, I find all this hard to believe. Maybe because it's just been enacted, it'll take some time. But it's hard to imagine it being like this for long.

No Windows for casual employees because of safety concerns. They don't want their projects to leak.
People at Adobe were said to use Macs too but still their suites are developed for Windows and then ported to Macs. They don't have to use a specific system to develop for it.
Since 90% of the world uses Windows most programs are made that way.

 

[dilla]

Still, is it not a step in the direction towards Macs? At Google I/O, most of the engineers were holding Macs. You don't think they'd get tired of switching and just stick to one, the more "secure" one? Make em on Macs and port them to Windows?

 

[masta247]

Still, is it not a step in the direction towards Macs? At Google I/O, most of the engineers were holding Macs. You don't think they'd get tired of switching and just stick to one, the more "secure" one? Make em on Macs and port them to Windows?

I don't really think Google likes Apple and their software. A lot of their programs were Windows-only at the beginning - including Chrome, Picasa galeries failed to work on Safari etc.
They use Macs and Linux systems as their tools. The only reason for that (despite them being Unix-based systems and Google loves it) is that there are less viruses and hacks available for them because they are way less popular. And considering that Mac OS is the most popular Unix system (and one of the few which is not free) there's nothing strange that a lot of their employees picked it. Especially since it's more similar to Windows than most other Unix systems and easier to troubleshoot because there are more people using it and more help online.
Only programs I know of that were first made for Macs and then ported to Windows were programs made by Apple like Safari. They all sucked balls on Windows systems though.
Also, back in the days some media suites were made that way.
It's always a priority to optimize your software for Windows because that's where the market is at. Mac/Linux is a secondary thing so usually developers just port their Windows versions to Macs, make a few optimizations with whatever budget is left and if it works they're releasing that. It's more about being able to say "we have a working Mac version" but usually Mac versions of software that was first available for Windows are inferior, have bugs and memory issues.

 

[Casey]

Are you using any third party Chrome extensions? Try disabling them and see if you still have the same problem.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

cooliris used to crash for me all the time and really hindered chrome's performance. since i have my pc again, i decided not to install the extension - and its fine.

the only time when chrome is slow for me is when it first loads up and i open about 5-10 pages in different tabs. otherwise its runs perfectly fine.

 

[dilla]

No extra extensions. Just Reader Notifier so far. I'll see on some Mac Forums if others are having this issue.

 

[Rukas]

Firefox or Camino on my Macbook.

 

[dilla]

Guys. I have to come clean about something. I was using 5.0 the whole time.

I would always click "check for updates" and it would say it was up to date with "5.0.xxxx" which I found weird. Only today did I realize there was a 6.0 (which wasn't released all that long ago, I believe) and now I'm really seeing the boost. Just spent about two minutes with it, but it is blazing fast so far.

Still gotta see if it coons around when images are to be loaded and heat up my computer, but....

 

[Casey]

Guys. I have to come clean about something. I was using 5.0 the whole time.

I would always click "check for updates" and it would say it was up to date with "5.0.xxxx" which I found weird. Only today did I realize there was a 6.0 (which wasn't released all that long ago, I believe) and now I'm really seeing the boost. Just spent about two minutes with it, but it is blazing fast so far.

Still gotta see if it coons around when images are to be loaded and heat up my computer, but....

LOL. There you go.

If you're feeling lucky, install the dev version to be at the cutting edge of Chrome development. I'm on version 6.0.472.11 right now and it's insanely fast.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

is v6.0 the beta version?