Firefox has CPU usage problem

Are you a Firefox user? Have you been frustrated by how the popular open-source browser appears to be hogging CPU resources when you're not looking? Well, you might want to take heart in that you are not alone in this. Brooke Crothers over at CNET News noticed this too, and discovered that complaints over Firefox consuming "a lot" of CPU resources is actually an issue already documented in a Mozilla Knowledge Base page here.

Based on his experiences, Crothers asserts that Firefox doesn't fare well when compared with other Web browsers. Unfortunately, I must admit that I do not use competing browsers enough to either confirm or dispute this claim. What I can say though is that I have noticed Firefox occasionally consumes a very high percentage of my processor cycles for no apparent reason.

Not only does this behavior cause poor performance with other applications, but it also causes my laptop to heat up quickly, causing the cooling fan to kick in. The situation is particularly bad when on battery, as I have noticed a drastic reduction in my runtime to as little as half of what I would normally expect.

Fortunately, shutting down Firefox and restarting it always resolves the problem. Assuming you are a Firefox user, has something similar happened to you before? I look forward to hearing your experiences on this.

For more on this story:
- check out this CNET News article

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