I suspect the differences are down to different settings in about:config. http://internetducttape.com/2006/12/02/how-to-fix-the-firefox-memory-leak-firefox-hack/ shows some ways to ‘fix’ this ‘bug’ in Firefox and if you look in Netscape some of these settings have already been changed.

It would be nice for another browser to be smaller, faster and better but Netscape 9 is Firefox with different icons. Nothing wrong with that per say but not exactly groundbreaking and I don’t see how they could make it use less memory other than tweaking a few config settings. That seems the simplest explanation. Occam’s razor as they say.

Firefox is well known to have memory leaks..

http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+memory+leak

..and this is what causes that browser to balloon up in system resources exponentially by using it for an extended period of time.

To recreate the leak, just open the browser and use it as you normally would. After a while check the Task Manager. The memory usage gets higher.. and higher.. and higher.

Several web sites suggest running Firefox in “safe mode,” but sometimes that doesn’t even cure the memory leak ill.

Netscape 9 in my experience does not do this. Granted, it’s not the “leanest” browser, but it doesn’t have the leak problem FF does for whatever reason.

I just did a clean boot loaded up Firefox and Netscape (using the same homepage) and Firefox shows 16mb while Netscape shows 21mb. If I then browse to a couple of other websites and check memory usage again (admittedly on the flawed Task Manager) I see Firefox taking 36mb and Netscape shows 40mb. I used a new profile and removed any plugins from both browsers. Obviously, 5mb is not a lot to worry about and I do like the linkpad thing so I might use it anyway as long as it supports the plugins I’m using.

So is there something I’m doing to be missing out on the resource saving?

I might check it out anyway though