IE 8 - 'RAM-hungry machine'

An unhappy news for those who still admire Internet Explorer (IE): the IE 8 version deserves to be called 'RAM-hogging machine'.

This information is confirmed by the IT experts of the exo.performance.network network. After testing both IE 7, IE 8 and Firefox 3.0.1, experts found a "problem" that IE 8 even requires more RAM than the Windows XP operating system. Here are a few initial notes:

- IE 8 requires at least 350 - 400 MB of memory for it to work.

- During working processes, IE 8 generates 150 to 200 more 'threads' of data and causes the CPU to process immediately.

- IE 8 also secretly ran to 6 iexplore.exe applications while working (usually in the previous versions of IE there was only one iexplore.exe application).

- IE 8 requires twice as much resources as Firefox

This result was recorded from the testing process of experts by including all three most popular browsers currently IE 7, IE 8 and Firefox 3.0.1 running on Microsoft operating systems such as Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP 1 and use the DMS Clarity Tracker monitoring tool to record all changes in the browser process.

The websites that experts use for testing are also very reliable sites like Fox News, CNet, and New York Times.

What surprised the most participants was that IE 8 required more RAM than the requirements of the entire Windows XP operating system. Experts give an example: When booting Windows XP SP3 on a system with 1 GB of RAM, they still have 800 MB left but when it comes to starting IE 8, their remaining RAM capacity is less than half. When testing with Windows Vista the situation is even worse.

In the process, IE 8 expanded and consumed more resources than the three Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint programs combined.

Even though it is just a web browser, IE 8 is 'heavier' than the Visual Studio 2008 multimedia graphics processing suite with 10,000 lines of code.

To sum up, IE 8 is an application that requires up to 50% more memory and also makes the CPU work 3 times more than its IE 7 seniors.

Perhaps Microsoft wants to build IE 8 as a browser for the future when Intel and AMD have "popularized" quad-core chips and RAM has been so cheap that people use at least 8 GB when running Windows Vista.

Randall Kennedy joked after testing IE 8 that it was time for him to buy a PC with an 8-core chip and 16 GB of RAM to run IE 8 for 'smoother'.