• An undemanding browser for an old computer. Browser for weak computers

    Choosing a browser is simple: just download any of the most popular ones and, sooner or later, you will definitely get used to it. But in order for the process of learning and further use to be as comfortable as possible, you must know what to look for and count on. Here is a list of the most famous free browsers for Windows 7/8/10. Download them and try them yourself - best option, but don’t be lazy to read the entire text, you’ll save time.

    Google Chrome - the forefront of web technologies

    Google Chrome This is the most popular browser today, installed on almost every computer. At first, Chrome gained popularity for its speed and flexibility in settings, including through the installation of browser extensions. Now this is not the fastest browser, but the most functional with support for all innovations in web technologies. A truly huge library of add-ons allows you to get any functionality.

    Chrome has under the hood Chromium engine, which became the standard for modern browsers. Majority popular browsers They make it on the chromium engine. The engine is responsible for rendering the code of pages and scripts -> in visible page on the monitor screen.

    Browser advantages:

    • All kinds of extensions that can replace standard programs
    • Failure control allows you to keep your browser working even if there is an error in one of the open windows
    • Warning the user about visiting malicious sites
    • Import settings from any browser
    • Multilingual interface
    • Automatic updates
    • There is a developer toolbar
    • with a Google account
    • The built-in task manager allows you to assess which tabs are consuming a lot of processor and memory resources
    • Not very convenient bookmarks, no built-in ones visual bookmarks, but there is
    • Doesn't work well with many open tabs, at the same time it eats a lot of memory, but frees it faster than anyone else after they are closed

    Currently, Google Chrome is considered the best browser for Windows 7 and Windows 8/10. But to each his own. For example, I don’t like the uninformative download manager when opening many tabs. True, there is an extension called The Great Suspender, which, after a specified time, frees memory from unused tabs. But Chrome doesn’t close them, and to see these pages again, you just need to refresh them.

    Chrome launches the fastest in Windows 7, but in Windows 7 and 10 things are bad - the loading time increases up to two times!

    Opera is the best choice

    There is perhaps no browser that is clearer, more understandable and easier to learn for a beginner than Opera. Although Opera now runs on the Chromium engine, it has everything you need to surf without installation additional extensions.

    I used to use Opera because of its convenient visual bookmarks (tiles with the most necessary sites on an empty tab) and the file download manager. Here it is done very conveniently and clearly. Opera - best browser for working with many open tabs, and in general. You can keep several dozen sites open, and this will not particularly affect the speed of work.

    Particularly useful in today's realities, built-in and unlimited traffic. And plus there is a “Turbo” function for compressing transmitted data for . But here you need to experiment. Sometimes, on a slow connection it turns out reverse effect– the speed decreases even more.

    Greetings, friends. A couple of days ago, one of my friends asked me for advice: what browser best bet on old PC? The question drove me into a dead end; somehow I had never thought about such things. And since my friend is still waiting for advice from me, I decided to delve deeper into this topic and formulate my answer.

    Browser, or web browser - application software to view web pages, web document contents, computer files and their catalogs; web application management; as well as for solving other problems.

    Let's start with the most common browsers. The point is that Google Chrome, Opera And Mozilla Firefox refused support Windows XP And Vista. That is, you won’t even be able to install the latest versions of these browsers on outdated laptops and PCs. And even if it does work, older PCs don’t have enough RAM to normal operation these browsers. Option using older versions - no best solution. Web standards do not stand still, which means that using older versions of browsers we will see a distorted display of modern websites. Or we won’t see it at all individual elements Internet pages.

    However, there is still a choice. Today I will tell you about four modern browsers that will work perfectly on old PCs and laptops, successfully coping with all standard tasks.

    K-Meleon

    K-Meleon has been around for over ten years. This Mozilla browser, which includes Firefox's Gecko engine. Design user interface The browser is very similar to that of regular Firefox. Like Firefox, K-Meleon has extensive options for customizing the toolbar, menu, and hotkeys.

    Although you won't be able to add Firefox extensions to K-Meleon, the browser still has plenty of handy plugins.

    K-Meleon is also the most fast browser, which is capable of running even on Windows 95, not to mention XP, Vista and other operating systems.

    Of the minuses: K-Meleon is updated very rarely. Latest at the time of creation of this article stable version browser – 75.1, released in 2015. There is Russian localization.

    Download K-Meleon from the official website. Pay attention to the heading “Latest Stable Release” - select one of the versions: Download installer, which requires installation, or portable, which does not require installation.

    Midori

    The creators of Midori designed the browser as an alternative to more bloated software products. While other browsers are constantly increasing in size, Midori remains minimalistic - the browser “weighs” only 37.7 megabytes. And since older PCs usually do not have roomy hard drive, this factor can be key when choosing a browser.

    Despite its small size, Midori works perfectly with all the latest web technologies, including HTML 5 and CSS 3.

    Midori was developed based on the webkit engine, which places it in the same family as Chrome. The browser does not have an extension repository, but it does have several settings available that you can use to tailor Midori to your needs.

    Midori has both installation version, and portable, which can be used without installation on a PC, for example from a flash drive or CD/DVD disk.

    Download Midori from the official website. Select one of the versions: installer, which requires installation, or portable, which does not require installation.

    Pale Moon

    Pale Moon– this browser is a fork from source code Firefox. Essentially, it's a stripped-down version of Firefox that runs on Windows XP and Vista. Pale Moon requires only 256 megabytes free memory and it is optimized for modern processors. This browser effectively uses system resources, which allows it to work on old PCs and laptops with enviable speed.

    Pale Moon has a very similar look to the old ones Firefox versions interface design. Many extensions that are available for Firefox will be compatible with Pale Moon. In addition, this browser has its own exclusive add-ons. The browser also allows you to customize many settings for tabs, page content, etc., just like Firefox.

    Update article from 12/21/2018. As one of my blog readers correctly noted, after a recent update, the Pale Moon browser has become more demanding on computer resources. Now the system requirements are:
    — Windows 7/8/10/Server 2008 R2 or later;
    — 1 GB of RAM;
    — at least 200 MB of free disk space.

    Download Pale Moon from the official website. Hover over the “Download” menu, then “Pale Moon” and select one of the available versions browser.

    Maxthon 5

    The fourth and last browser for today that I want to show you is Maxthon 5. This is promising software that continues to actively develop. System Requirements browsers are very modest: a 1 GHz processor, 512 megabytes of RAM and 64 megabytes of hard disk space.

    Not everyone can afford a computer that is equipped with the latest technology and works quickly. Some owners of weak PCs simply don’t want to get rid of it, but it’s also very difficult to use such a machine even for banal surfing the Internet. In this case, you can find a fast and lightweight browser. The task is not the simplest, but still solvable. From this article you will learn how to choose a web browser for your weak PC.

    Web browser for a weak computer

    There is no definition as such – “weak computer”. Over time, a good PC will no longer be relevant and will be considered obsolete.


    It all depends on the characteristics of the PC, for example, users look at RAM ( RAM), clock frequency processor and number of cores, video card (memory, frequency) and, last but not least, the size of the hard drive.

    Which browser is the lightest?

    To understand this, you need to install several web browsers. Next, we will launch them one by one under the same conditions, that is, the same pages will be loaded at startup.


    For comparison, let's take the following three Internet pages:








    Every time you open the site we will call "Task Manager", where we pay attention to processor load and memory.

    Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge

    Since the PC does not shine with performance, you can use what the system offers - a standard browser. Although Internet Explorer not so convenient and not many people use it, yet it consumes less memory than the well-known ones Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox.


    1. Launch the browser Internet Explorer on the page http://lumpics.ru/about/. IN "Task Manager" pay attention to "Memory"– 66.7 MB.




    Actually, we can end here. Now it's up to you to decide which web browser to choose for your weak PC.

    Since its inception world wide web, called the Internet, surfing tools began to develop at a frantic pace. Web browsers are used as the main tool. But not all of them are equal in their capabilities and the load they can put on the system. Let's try to figure out which browser loads the system the least, taking into account the main technical characteristics and reviews of ordinary users.

    What is the load on the system?

    To understand the meaning of the load, you should directly examine the load being loaded into at the moment content contained on a specific web resource. It is clear that if the site is a resource that presents exclusively text, there is nothing to talk about. The system reads text in any encoding and doesn’t really strain itself.

    The question of which browser loads the system the least should be considered from the point of view of multimedia content or development tools provided by the browsers themselves.

    If we talk about multimedia, it’s immediately worth considering that the processing tools provided in the main versions of programs are often supplemented by a fairly large number of special plug-ins. Take, for example, Adobe Flash Player, responsible for high-quality reproduction of animation, graphics and sound.

    Thus, the relevant question will be not so much about which browser consumes the least resources, but about how resource-intensive the additional plugin is, because the browser itself in its pure form may not work with some elements of web pages.

    Basic performance parameters

    If we consider the main characteristics of the most famous and most often used tools, the first thing for any user or expert tester is the speed of launching the program itself from executable file and speed of opening pages.

    Unfortunately, many users who are trying to figure out which browser uses less CPU or RAM, often ignore the application startup options. So to speak, in their pure form after installation, they all start quite quickly. This is only due to the fact that they do not have plugins connected, the cache is not full, there is no browsing history, etc.

    Over time, any, even the most sophisticated browser with a bunch of bells and whistles turns into a clumsy hulk. The saddest thing is that even deleting temporary files does not help. And if you also take into account the initialization of plug-ins at program startup, in general, it’s worth thinking about the advisability of installing them.

    Some applications have their own set that cannot be deleted, but can be disabled. So, for example, Chrome comes with built-in components like Adobe Flash Player or AdBlock. If everything is clear with the first plugin, the second sometimes causes legitimate complaints. It is responsible for blocking ads, pop-ups and banners, and can also prevent some auto-executing scripts and applets embedded in web pages from working. And all this takes a lot of time.

    Opening pages with preliminary content analysis directly depends on the content. Any modern browser takes a fraction of a second to do this. Again, it all depends on the plugins - the more there are, the slower the program runs. And incorrectly installed or incompatible add-ons slow down the system even more.

    Which browsers use less memory?

    But let’s start checking the means of Internet access themselves. Here you should take into account the consumption of operational, virtual and physical memory. If you understand the question of which browser loads the system the least, you should pay attention to the basic default settings and the size of the allocated cache.

    Cached data, although it allows you to open the most frequently visited pages by saving some elements on the hard drive, is nevertheless capable of clogging up the system too much and causing programs to freeze. This is due to the constant analysis of loaded structural elements of pages. If there is a sufficiently large number of them, more time is required for analysis and loading.

    In this regard, the best performance, judging by user and expert reviews, is shown by Internet Explorer 11, Edge from Windows 10, Mozilla and Google Chrome. Opera, although a very popular means of accessing the Internet, is much slower. In addition, today you can find so many versions of the program in unofficial sources that you don’t always know whether a given product is safe.

    and reviews

    If you look at it, you can make a list in which, as you would expect, there are exclusively programs from the most famous developers:

    • Internet Explorer;
    • Edge;
    • Opera;
    • Mozilla Firefox;
    • Chrome.

    It would be possible to add here some programs like Amigo, Yandex Browser, 360 Safety Browser or something else. But they are specifically not included in the list, since they are built on the basis of Chrome and are not of interest as truncated or expanded derivatives of the main product. Often, due to unfinished technologies and algorithms, many more problems arise in them than in the parent product. This is evidenced by clearly unflattering statements from users.

    Now let’s look at the question of which browser loads the system the least in a little more detail.

    Internet Explorer

    To IE included in any operating room Windows systems, users have an extremely negative attitude because early versions the programs were so unfinished that it was not even possible to talk about any convenience of working on the Internet.

    Over time, Microsoft developers revised the basic concept of the browser, resulting in the 11th version of the application. No matter what anyone says, Internet Explorer 11 in all respects surpasses Mozilla, Chrome, and even more so Opera. The load is minimal, startup is much faster than similar applications, clearing the cache and temporary files does not require user intervention, as it was before (you had to clean the folders Temporary Files manually).

    Edge

    The same Internet Explorer became the progenitor of a new generation browser called Edge, which appeared only in Windows 10 (a version is not provided for systems of a lower rank).

    This application rightfully occupies the top positions in all ratings. Majority background processes when starting the program, it is automated, the start takes place within a couple of seconds, opening pages even without installing related plugins is very fast. By the way, you don’t need to install add-ons - everything comes included here.

    Another thing is that this browser is somewhat inconvenient to configure, especially in terms of disabling extensions. And it's a little annoying home page default (news, weather, advertising, etc.). But all this can be disabled if you set the dummy at startup, similar to how it is done in IE.

    Opera

    The notorious "Opera", although revered by many, is lately lost in positions. Despite the convenient and fairly simple interface, performance leaves much to be desired.

    Even at startup, you may notice that it takes too long to access hard drive, and also when complete cleaning cache and deleting temporary files. True, one of the advantages is the opportunity quick setup, disabling or removing extensions. But this in no way can affect the overall rating.

    Mozilla Firefox

    The search for an answer to the question of which browser loads the system the least cannot do without this browser.

    Light and fast - that's what you can say about it. However, not all users appreciate it fully. The fact is that “Fire Fox” cannot be considered as the most primitive means of accessing the Internet. This browser is more suitable for web developers and can be used as a complete platform for creating web applications. The tools here are much wider than what other favorites on the list offer.

    Chrome and browsers based on it

    Chrome is considered the fastest of all existing browsers. Developments based on it are fast only after the first installation, but over time they begin to slow down incredibly.

    The speed of launch, the speed of opening pages, and the ease of setup or management are excellent. Plus - greatest number developed plugins and extensions. The question is different. Is it worth installing them? This is something everyone decides for themselves. Nevertheless, in all the main indicators in the popularity lists, this browser is not inferior to Edge.

    What to choose?

    So, we choose Of course, preference (based on user reviews) could be given to Microsoft products, however, it is believed that the most the best option will install Chrome.

    And here they speak in favor of choice not only technical specifications or performance parameters with minimal system load. If you look more broadly, you will notice that latest version The application supports RDP (remote desktop) technologies and can be used as the main client for connecting to computers and laptops, even from mobile devices.

    Thus, the balance in the question of which browser loads the system the least, is the easiest to manage and configure, clearly tips in favor of Chrome, although this assessment is based solely on ratings, nothing more.

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