5850 I've reconfirmed an odd problem running Firefox 3 on my old G4 upgraded PowerBook G3 Pismo, which is still the platform I use for a lot of Web research, drafting, markup, and Web posting.

I have been using Netscape Navigator 9 on that machine for most Web posting for about a year now, and it works beautifully, but unfortunately Navigator has been discontinued, and I do love Firefox 3's ability to save sessions when I restart or shut down the computer. FF3 works great on my 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook running OS 10.5 Leopard.

When the Firefox 3 final was released earlier this year, I decided to switch to in on the Pismo, and was disappointed to discover that it was significantly slower on that machine than Navigator 9 is, and frequently stalled out loading certain pages I visit often. I soon tired of that and switched back to Navigator 9, but last weekend after restarting the Pismo I decided to give Firefox 3 another shot.

Unfortunately, the obtuse behavior was still there, and I also noted that with Firefox 3 running, I was getting near-constant hard drive activity in the background, which is not the case with Navigator 9, or with Opera 9.51, or iCab 4 which I also usually have up and running. Firefox 3 was not only dog-slow and cranky itself, but was slowing everything else down with the constant hard drive activity.

I resignedly switched back to Navigator 9, and things were immediately back to normal. Navigator is fast, smooth, reliable and quiet.

I hasten to reemphasize that I haven't noticed similar issues with Firefox 3 on my Leopard machine, but it does seem to have a problem with Tiger, at least on my PowerBook. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced similar phenomena with Firefox 3 running in Tiger.


Charles W. Moore

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