Firefox Ultimate Optimizer 2009 ??

[Carl]

Quite a lot of claims made that this will make Firefox utilizes a lot less ram. How ever some says it is malware. Any one knows?

 

http://www.ixibo.com/2009/02/firefox-ul ... izer-2009/

[Austin]

Hey Carl, great question!

 

You're not alone with being wary about suspicious 3rd-party add-ons for FireFox. Personally I automatically distrust any add-on not made available through the official mozilla add-ons site. [https://addons.mozilla.org/]

 

I took a look and it turns out you are right, there ARE a few problems with this add-on .

 

1. The installation package is bundled with malware and scripts designed to take you to different sites and download spyware/malware/crapware, all of it is junk and potentially harmful.
   
2. Even if you remove the malware the program only half-works.*

 

*The program does not increase Firefox performance what-so-ever. Rather all it does is force Firefox to use up your computers Virtual Memory rather than your physical memory. Virtual memory is powered by your CPU. So yes it will use less ram, but it sacrifices the CPU instead and may end up running even slower, or in other words the decrease in ram usage is just a make-shift illusion.

 

I strongly reccomend against this, sacrificing CPU in order to decrease RAM usage on something as small as Firefox should never be an option to begin with. If someone is that desperate for more RAM space then it's time to:

 

1. Buy new RAM
   or
   
2. Uninstall programs that are running in the background that you don't need

 

Thanks for the idea as well, now I need to write about some alternative ways to increase Firefox performance.

 

Hope this helps!

[Carl]

Hey Carl, great question!

 

You're not alone with being wary about suspicious 3rd-party add-ons for FireFox. Personally I automatically distrust any add-on not made available through the official mozilla add-ons site. [https://addons.mozilla.org/]

 

I took a look and it turns out you are right, there ARE a few problems with this add-on .

 

1. The installation package is bundled with malware and scripts designed to take you to different sites and download spyware/malware/crapware, all of it is junk and potentially harmful.
   
2. Even if you remove the malware the program only half-works.*

 

*The program does not increase Firefox performance what-so-ever. Rather all it does is force Firefox to use up your computers Virtual Memory rather than your physical memory. Virtual memory is powered by your CPU. So yes it will use less ram, but it sacrifices the CPU instead and may end up running even slower, or in other words the decrease in ram usage is just a make-shift illusion.

 

I strongly reccomend against this, sacrificing CPU in order to decrease RAM usage on something as small as Firefox should never be an option to begin with. If someone is that desperate for more RAM space then it's time to:

 

1. Buy new RAM
   or
   
2. Uninstall programs that are running in the background that you don't need

 

Thanks for the idea as well, now I need to write about some alternative ways to increase Firefox performance.

 

Hope this helps!

Thanks gD great advice. Looking forward to the alternative ways of increasing the performance. One thing that is tsill so confusing is the myriad .exe files running when you open the Task Manager. I have gone on several sites trying to figure out what i can stop and what not. How ever to damn scared or not geeky enough or brave enough. May be a right up exist that i have missed?

[Steve Krause]

Thanks gD great advice. Looking forward to the alternative ways of increasing the performance. One thing that is tsill so confusing is the myriad .exe files running when you open the Task Manager. I have gone on several sites trying to figure out what i can stop and what not. How ever to damn scared or not geeky enough or brave enough. May be a right up exist that i have missed?

 

Hi Carl,

 

I've never heard of the myriad.exe process and looking around I don't see much data. what you might do is use the steps we laid out for finding out what svchost.exe does IE: Using process explorer and Task manager to track where myriad.exe is installed and then you can find the executable etc..

 

http://www.groovypost.com/howto/geek-st ... y-running/

 

Keep us updated! Perhaps create a new topic to track this one.