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by bxparks 2326 days ago
Can't avoid Chrome on a Chromebook. On the MBA, I use Chrome as well. I've migrated to Firefox on my Windows and Linux laptops, but I thought Firefox had battery issues on MacOS.

I usually keep about 5-7 pinned tabs open (Gmail, Contact, Calendar, Keep, Drive, HackerNews, etc) and cycle through ~3-7 transient tabs, and I find that the browsing experience is not enjoyable on 4GB machines anymore.
3 comments
lberk 2326 days ago
I don't have any distinct cpu/memory/battery profiling datasets to provide anything but a personal anecdote. I dropped Chrome due to general laptop responsiveness in favour of a combo of Firefox with AdNausem and Privacy Badger. Which, has worked fine for my use (not noticed any adverse battery effects but I've also not been actively monitoring), though I don't use nearly the number of google services you've listed. Your results may differ, I've heard mixed reviews (again, anecdotally, so take with a grain of salt) of google services in firefox and safari.
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lrae 2326 days ago
> but I thought Firefox had battery issues on MacOS.

Does it still, are you referring to 70+? Firefox 70 in October came with big improvements[1], I didn't do any testing though. I think I saw some benchmarks showing it's slightly worse than Chrome, but it was minor. Can't find them right now unfortunately.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/firefox-70-brings-en...

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yjftsjthsd-h 2326 days ago
> Can't avoid Chrome on a Chromebook

It is deeply psychologically jarring, but Firefox runs through the Android and I think Linux compat layers on a Chromebook just fine. I have no idea how much this actually buys you when the OS is by Google for running Chrome, but it does work.

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