I’m probably WAY behind the curve on this. I’m sure everyone has seen these fixes and implemented them. But I just looked ‘em up and applied them. Wow!!! What a difference. One was for Firefox and one was for both Firefox and Thunderbird. And both have made noticeable changes.

To apply these tweaks (if you haven’t already), open up a new tab and type about:config in the address bar.

1. Right-click and select New > Integer. Type in browser.cache.memory.capacity and give it a value of 16384 for 16MB or something else around that.
2. Right-click and select New > Integer. Type in config.trim_on_minimize and give it a value of false.

The second one can also be applied to Thunderbird. Before applying this tweak, when I had Thunderbird minimized, it used over 20MB of memory … just sitting there. After I applied it, it went down to around 4MB when minimized. Right now, it’s up to 8MB, but that’s still quite a bit lower than before. And when I minimized Firefox, I got around the same result. Nice.

Just wanted to share in case there are other people out there who are a little behind the times, like I am.

Mood: okay   GH

My mouse is now working. I did a Google search for it and got a link to the Microsoft site for their mice. I found a link to download the software, so I did. I installed it and restarted my computer. At first, the mouse wouldn’t work. So I tried it in 2 of the other USB ports. It worked on one in the front, but not the other (curious). Then I tried it in back again, and it worked. Woohoo!! I now have a brand new optical wheel mouse. Yeah … it’s not a fancy one, but it’s an upgrade from my old one … which is as old as my computer (almost 6 years).

Now I’m off to Google some more. I’m gonna see if I can find any performance tweaks I can try on my system. I know there’s something about a Firefox memory leak, or something like that. I’m gonna see if I can find that and anything else I can find. Since it’ll be a few months yet before I’ve got the money for a laptop, I’ve gotta make this old desktop work a little longer. Hopefully I don’t work it to death … LOL.

Mood: okay   CSI

Well … I got my memory today. And I was actually home when they delivered it. I really figured I’d have to head up north to pick it up. But the Big Brown Truck showed up about 5 minutes after I got home from work.

I put the memory in a little bit ago and started it up. There was a little burp where I couldn’t get my mouse to work. You see … I got an optical one from work. It doesn’t appear to work. I’ll have to see if they have any software for it. It’s an optical mouse. I’ll have to check tomorrow.

After I got the mouse working, I fired up the computer. I was REALLY hoping to see a noticeable difference in performance. After all … I did double my memory. But maybe the issue isn’t the memory. Maybe it’s just the fact that the system is almost 6 years old. LOL I guess I’ll just have to use it a while and see if the problems I was having before are still there or not. Maybe I just expected too much from the start. I just need to use it a while and see how it goes.

Mood: disappointed   Ugly Betty