Web browsing - not just for Celerons anymore

Whew. When I bought this moderately cheap laptop, I skimped a bit on the processor and memory.

The conventional wisdom was that if your computing needs were light (e-mail, web browsing, word processing, etc.), you could be quite happy with a lightweight machine. If your needs were heavier (3-D gaming, movie editing, sound editing, etc.), you'd need a phat Pentium with buckets of memory to be happy.

Eventually, the day came when my laptop would bog down under the simplest of tasks, like e-mail and two web browser windows. First, I figured the hard drive suffered from the clutter of having too many programs installed/uninstalled on a Windows OS. Then, I assumed it was the grinding mechanical failure of the hard drive itself, which I replaced.

With my new, uncluttered hard drive, I'd open two Firefox windows, and time would stretch inside-out. Paging down would occur in jumpy fits and starts; switching windows became an exercise in patience, not an eye-blink. I realized that almost any window I'd open in Firefox would pour sand into my computer's gears, and wouldn't relent until I closed it. Not Firefox! I can't go back to IE, I just can't!!

I furthered narrowed down the problem to Flash doo-hickeys in web pages. Rarely are Flash components simple anymore - they aim for fast downloads, moving the bottleneck from bandwidth to processor, and dragging my machine to a crawl.

It was good news, though. Finally, a manageable point in the process! I slipped over to Firefox's website, and downloaded an extension that disables Flash components. Nice! Now, an icon sits where a cycle-gobbling Flash app would normally sprawl its fat ass, and if you want to enact it, just click on it!

Huzzah! Now I can load several pages of text and images, just as God intended it, without slowing my laptop to a time-lapse photography version of a normal PC operation. I am functional again!