Which browser is most convenient for young people. The advantages of the Maxthon browser are as follows. But there are also disadvantages

The company positioned the browser as an alternative to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Redmond used testing and other opportunities to compare Edge with its competitors and with Internet Explorer and demonstrate its advantages in terms of security and energy efficiency.

However, if you look at the raw numbers, Microsoft Edge has almost zero chance of ever becoming straight Google competitor Chrome. NetMarketShare statistics for June confirm that Microsoft is having serious problems promoting the browser.

Last month the most popular browser for computers was Google Chrome. Its market share is 59.59 percent. The second place was taken by the rapidly losing position Internet Explorer, which received a share of 16.84%. Share Mozilla Firefox amounted to 12.2%, which allows the browser to confidently hold third place in the final ranking.

The growth of the Microsoft Edge audience in June was only 0.02% - from 5.63% to 5.65%. In May and April the number of users Microsoft browser increased by only 0.01%.

Chrome works on 6 out of 10 computers

Google Chrome's growth is also slowing, mainly because the browser already runs on most PCs. Last month, Chrome improved from 59.36% to 59.49%.

Edge's growth has been minimal even though the browser ships with Windows 10 Creators Update, which is considered the safest and functional version Windows. In version 1703, Microsoft Edge received many new features, as well as security and usability improvements. Besides, in Windows Store New browser extensions have appeared.

As it turns out, users aren't very impressed Microsoft's work in the browser market. Absolute majority on this moment stick to Google's decision.

However, Microsoft Edge has a pretty good chance of becoming the world's third most popular desktop browser once Internet Explorer loses ground.

StatCounter data

Data from another analytical service, StatCounter, indicates an even more depressing situation for Microsoft. According to the report, Edge's share is at 3.89%.

Found a typo? Press Ctrl + Enter

With the development of web technologies, the content displayed using a browser becomes more and more “heavy”. The video bitrate is increasing, caching and storing data requires more and more space, and scripts running on user machines consume a lot of CPU time. Browser developers keep up with trends and try to include support for all new trends in their products. This leads to latest versions popular browsers place increased demands on the system on which they are running. In this article we will talk about which browser to choose for a computer that does not have enough power to use browsers from " big three"and the like.

As part of the article, we will conduct a kind of testing of four browsers - Maxthon Nitro, Pale Moon, Otter Browser, K-Meleon - and compare their behavior with , as the most voracious browser at the time of writing. During the process, we'll look at startup and running speeds, RAM and CPU utilization, and whether there are enough resources left to complete other tasks. Since Chrome provides extensions, we will test both with and without them.

It is worth noting that some results may differ from those you get from such testing. This applies to those parameters that depend on Internet speed, in particular, page loading.

Test configuration

To carry out the test, we actually took weak computer. The initial parameters are:


About browsers

Let's talk briefly about the browsers participating in today's testing - about the engines, features, and so on.

Maxthon Nitro

This browser created by the Chinese company Maxthon International Limited based on the Blink engine - a converted WebKit for . Supports all operating systems, including mobile ones.

Pale Moon

This member is a brother with some modifications and one of them is optimization for Windows systems and only under them. This, according to the developers, makes it possible to significantly increase the speed of work.

Otter Browser

"Otter" was created using the Qt5 engine, which is used by the developers. The data on the official website is very scarce, so there is nothing more to say about the browser.

K-Meleon

This is another browser on Firefox base, but with the most reduced functionality. This move by the creators made it possible to minimize resource consumption and increase speed.

Startup speed

Let's start from the beginning - let's measure the time it takes for the browser to fully launch, that is, you can already open pages, make settings, etc. The goal is to determine which patient comes to a state of combat readiness faster. As home page We will use google.com. We will take measurements until it is possible to enter text into the search bar.

  • Maxthon Nitro – from 10 to 6 seconds;
  • Pale Moon – from 6 to 3 seconds;
  • Otter Browser – from 9 to 6 seconds;
  • K-Meleon – from 4 to 2 seconds;
  • Google Chrome (extensions disabled) – from 5 to 3 seconds. With extensions ( , Browsec, ePN CashBack) – 11 seconds.

As we can see, all browsers quite quickly open their window on the desktop and show readiness for work.

Memory consumption

Since we are very limited in the amount of RAM, this indicator is one of the most important. Let's look into "Task Manager" and calculate the total consumption of each experimental subject, having previously opened three identical pages– Yandex ( home page), YouTube and website. Measurements will be taken after some waiting.


Let's launch a video on YouTube with a resolution of 480p and see how much the situation changes.


Now let's complicate the task by simulating a real work situation. To do this, we will open 10 tabs in each browser and look at the overall responsiveness of the system, that is, we will check whether it is comfortable to work with the browser and other programs in this mode. As mentioned above, we have Word, Notepad, a calculator running, and we will also try to open Paint. We will also measure page loading speed. The results will be recorded based on subjective feelings.

  • In Maxthon Nitro, there are slight delays in switching between browser tabs and when opening running programs. The same thing happens when viewing the contents of folders. In general, the OS behaves quite well with minor lags. The page loading speed is not annoying.
  • Pale Moon beats Nitro in terms of tab switching and page loading speed, but the rest of the system is somewhat slower, with long delays when starting programs and opening folders.
  • When using Otter Browser, page rendering speed is quite slow, especially after opening several tabs. The overall responsiveness of the browser also leaves much to be desired. After launching Paint Otter, it stopped responding to our actions for some time, and running applications opened very “tightly”.
  • Another thing about K-Meleon is that the loading of pages and the speed of switching between tabs is very high. “Drawing” starts instantly, other programs also respond quite quickly. The system overall responds well.
  • Even though Google Chrome tries to unload the contents of unused tabs from memory (when they are activated, they are reloaded), the active use of the page file makes the work completely uncomfortable. This is expressed in constant reboot pages, and in some cases in the demo empty field instead of content. Other programs also “don’t like” the proximity to Chrome, as there are high delays and refusals to respond to user actions.

The latest measurements showed real situation of things. If under gentle conditions all products produce similar results, then when the load on the system increases, some are left behind.

Since in different situations CPU load may vary, we will look at the behavior of browsers in idle mode. The same tabs shown above will be opened.


All patients show good results, that is, they do not load the “stone” during the absence of actions within the program.

Watch video

In this step we will enable the video card by setting NVIDIA driver. We will measure the number of frames per second using the program in full screen mode and 720p resolution with 50 FPS. The video will be included on YouTube.


As you can see, not all browsers are capable of fully playing video in HD quality. When using them, you will have to reduce the resolution to 480p or even 360p.

Conclusion

During testing, we identified some important features our current test subjects. Based on the results obtained, we can draw the following conclusions: K-Meleon is the fastest in operation. It saves maximum resources for other tasks, but is not entirely suitable for watching videos high quality. Nitro, Pale Moon and Otter are approximately equal in memory consumption, but the latter lags far behind in overall responsiveness under increased load. As for Google Chrome, its use on computers similar in configuration to our test one is completely unacceptable. This is expressed in brakes and freezes due to high load to the swap file, and therefore to the hard drive.

Greetings, dear readers. If you are reading this article, then you are also thinking about which browser is better to choose today. Quantity special programs for viewing sites on the Internet (which are also called browsers) are quite large, but only a few of them are particularly popular. This article will discuss the best and most popular browsers.

Before choosing, of course, you need to understand what you will be doing. I mean how you will use this or that browser. For some, it’s enough to just browse websites and that’s it, while others intend to use the maximum capabilities of the browser, both for watching videos and downloading.

Everything we consider below is purely our opinion and it may differ from yours. But still, based on our opinion, you can draw your own conclusions. We use browsers as much as possible and perform all sorts of different tasks, I hope our review will help you with your choice.

Microsoft Internet Explorer.

This browser should be familiar to everyone Windows user, since it comes pre-installed with almost every version of this operating system. The latest version of this browser is 11, it is also preinstalled in operating systems ah Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.


It is also possible to install latest version on Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8, the rest Windows versions forced to settle for older ones Internet versions Explorer.

This browser may be suitable for the most ordinary, most undemanding users, but in almost any respect it loses to any competitor. It is very problematic to recommend it for use. It's terrible to use.

Pros:

  • Comes complete with the Windows operating system, so it is immediately ready to work without any installation.

Minuses:

  • Classic, but outdated interface, without the ability to change it;
  • Slow work is among the most popular Internet browsers Explorer is the slowest;
  • Lack of ability to synchronize data with the cloud;
  • Lack of support for browser extensions;
  • Works only on Windows.
  • Discontinued development


This browser was released along with the Windows 10 operating system; in fact, it only works in it. In many ways, this browser is a “relaunch” of the abandoned Internet Explorer. Microsoft has seriously improved its browser compared to its predecessor, adding useful features“cloud” storage of settings and support for extensions.


It works faster, but the functionality is still weak. Personally, it’s still hard for me to get used to it, but who knows, maybe it will catch up with its competitors. And when asked which browser is better, this one is worth studying and trying.

Pros:

  • Pre-installed with Windows 10 operating system;
  • Extension support;
  • Synchronization of settings with the Microsoft cloud;

Minuses:

  • Small number of extensions;
  • Weak options for customizing appearance;
  • Works only on Windows 10.

Product worldwide famous company Google is the world's most popular browser. Of course, its popularity can be explained by the great name of its developer, but this will not be the most accurate statement - at the moment, in terms of speed of work with Chrome web pages- leader.


Like any modern browser, Chrome supports user data synchronization via the cloud - user data is synchronized between various devices, beginning with personal computers working under Windows, Linux, MacOS and ending mobile devices under the control of operating iOS systems from Android. There is also a huge number of extensions and themes, which are provided in sufficient quantities in the Chrome Online Store.

Pros:

  • Most fast browser to date;
  • A huge number of themes and extensions;
  • Rapid implementation of the latest technologies;
  • Flexible and intuitive browser settings;
  • The ability to synchronize data with other devices via the Google cloud.

Minuses:

  • Little possibility of changing the program design.

Before Google exit Chrome, this browser was the most popular competitor to Internet Explorer. Now he is content with “only” second place in statistics, losing first place to Google product. This browser except operating ones Windows systems can work on many others - MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS.


From interesting features We should highlight the possibility of greatly changing the appearance of the program, access to almost all settings, as well as work under Windows XP, which modern browsers rarity.

Pros:

  • Possibility of installation large quantity extensions, of which there are plenty;
  • Wide possibilities for changing the appearance of the program;
  • Flexible and clear settings.

Minuses:

  • Occasional problems or delays with support for new technologies.


A browser from the Russian company Yandex, built on the same engine as Google Chrome. The developer added it to the browser various components, significantly expanding the functionality of the program - the browser understands mouse gestures, there is a “turbo mode” that allows you to save traffic, but you have to pay for such an expansion of functionality with much greater consumption of computer resources.


BUT, there is more than one but. I personally like Yandex Browser because it is tailored for the Russian user. In addition to all the good things that Chrome has, a lot of useful things have been added here, in particular user safety and easy opportunity put away intrusive advertising and a beautiful interface with many settings.

The browser is constantly updated, keeping up with the times, just like the Yandex search engine itself. In this browser it is easy to synchronize with your Yandex account and all products of this company. Again, I note that security is excellent, including passwords.

But if the computer is weak, then it’s difficult to use, it eats up a lot of resources, so what good browser you will have to pay in productivity.

Pros:

  • “Turbo mode”, which speeds up page loading and reduces traffic consumption;
  • Mouse gesture support;
  • Good user protection on the Internet (payments, passwords, etc.);
  • Minimum advertising (you can remove it altogether with add-ons);
  • Integration with Yandex search and its products;
  • Support for a large number of platforms;
  • Flexible and clear settings;
  • Ability to change appearance;
  • Frequent and useful updates;
  • Synchronization of settings via the cloud.

Minuses:

  • Not the most democratic consumption of resources.

But why isn’t he in first place, you ask. Trite, but significant: productivity plays a big role.

Opera.

This is one of the old guys. It’s also worth noting, because I myself use it quite often in Lately. At first, I didn’t think at all that this browser would come to life, but no, it has updated quite well. Moreover, in good side.


In terms of speed, it is not much inferior to Firefox. There are built-in ad blockers and free VPN, for those who need it. Also interesting modern design And good navigation. For those who installed it for the first time, figuring it out is as easy as shelling pears.

Pros:

  • There are extensions;
  • Intuitive interface;
  • Built-in ad blocker;
  • Convenient navigation in history;
  • Quite fast browser.

Minuses:

  • Few extensions;
  • Similar to Google Chrome.


Tor Browser(it is often referred to as simply Tor, Tor) is a browser built on the basis of Mozilla Firefox for use on the Tor network, to provide maximum anonymity in the Internet. The Tor network consists of a huge number of computer servers through which encrypted user traffic passes.


Using this browser all the time to browse the Internet may not seem entirely comfortable due to the poor fast speed operation of this very Tor network, so in most cases it is used either to access resources blocked by the provider, or when you need to ensure complete anonymity.

Pros:

  • Ability to access any website ignoring any blocking;
  • Complete anonymity.

Minuses:

  • Slow operating speed.

Which browser is better to choose?

If stable and fast work, then the clear choice is Google Chrome. It is not for nothing that this browser ranks first in the world, and most modern web resources are developed primarily for compatibility with it. Plus, Chrome is available on almost every popular platform, allowing you to sync your bookmarks and passwords between your computer and phone.

If for some reason you don’t like Chrome, then you should turn your attention to Firefox or Opera. Most of what was said about Chrome is also perfect for them - data synchronization between different devices, support for a wide number of platforms, and in addition to all this, low demands on hardware resources, which may please owners of not the most powerful computers.

For those who value privacy or simply need to frequently access blocked resources, Tor Browser may be useful. Use it on permanent basis It’s difficult, but it’s not at all necessary to make it your main browser - it can easily be installed even on a flash drive.

Personally, I use Yandex Browser more often. The resources allow, although sometimes I swear at the speed of work, but advertising does not torment me, I use many Yandex services and they are all at hand. And now I don’t enter passwords over and over again every time, but save them in the browser. Except for the most important ones))))

In general, this is everyone’s business, install it, try it, if you don’t like it, then you can switch to one browser or another without any problems.

That's all for now, bye everyone, leave your comments below and join us on Odnoklassniki. And also read us on our channel in Yandex.Zen.

Which browser is the best and fastest for Windows? updated: February 13, 2018 by: Subbotin Pavel

As part of my job, I have to maintain several very advanced computers in working order. In terms of hardware, this is not difficult - fortunately, cars produced 10 years ago are often assembled (soldered) to a higher quality than modern consumer goods. But in terms of software the task is more difficult. The biggest headache for me is antiviruses and browsers. Both of them are very eager to random access memory, which, alas, is in short supply (for the last 1.5 years, the budget for upgrading computers at school has been approaching zero, and a small upgrade can only be done if the old hardware completely fails). Meanwhile, it is highly advisable to update both the antivirus and the browser periodically. We'll talk about choosing an antivirus some other time, but today I'll try to find the fastest browser for old computers.

First, a little background. Until recently, I installed the old Opera 12 on all old computers. But, alas, one fine day, this once wonderful browser began to display a vital website crookedly - electronic journal. Well, I had to say goodbye to the old Opera and look for alternatives.

First of all, of course, I checked how the fresh Opera would behave on old machines. Alas, as expected, Opera 30 (this version was current at the time of my experiment) behaved like a typical Chromium browser: it consumed a lot of memory, forcing the computer to swap heavily (IDE disk, heh...). Things were a little better with other standard chrome clones (Yandex.Browser, Chrome itself). Behaves relatively well fresh Firefox 40, but it has obvious problems with interface rendering (it slows down) and memory consumption is still quite high (especially when opening 2-3 tabs). Well, since the browsers known to everyone cannot cope with the task, let’s try different exotic ones.

Part 1. Looking for a fast browser in the Chromium camp

I was pleasantly surprised in terms of speed. Being an add-on to Internet Explorer, it works very quickly and does not eat up too much memory. But, alas, all this happiness is available only on Windows 7, and my weakest machines run Windows XP. No, the mentioned SlimBrowser works great under Windows XP, but the IE8 engine, alas, is hopelessly outdated and is not much different in rendering quality from the same Opera 12-.

Next, I decided to try out “unusual” variations on the Chromium theme. There were as many as three candidates. The first of them is . It is positioned by the developers as a light and fast browser. In general, this statement is true - for a chromo clone, Midori is really quite light and fast. But, unfortunately, on computers with 1 gigabyte of RAM (and even more so with 512 megabytes) it is not light enough.
The second candidate is Chinese. The younger brother of the well-known Maxthon was born about a year ago. In essence, it is Chromium stripped to the limit. It really works quite quickly, but it still consumes a lot of memory. I would recommend it more as an addition to the main browser on normal machines (when you need to quickly read something without waiting for the main browser to load - Nitro loads almost instantly). But this browser is not suitable for older computers.

Finally, latest Chrome in my experiment, this is an OpenSource project. The developer positions it as a successor to the good old Opera, but modern engine(guess which one?). True, from a technical point of view, this browser is built a little differently - it does not create a separate process for each sneeze. This feature allows Otter (and this is how the name of the browser is translated from English) to save memory quite well. In terms of speed and functionality, Otter is also doing pretty well. But, alas, it is still very crude and not stable enough for everyday use. And the interface, to be honest, leaves much to be desired... Besides, Otter is essentially a one-man show (in the sense of a developer) and, alas, there is almost no hope for quickly bringing the project to a digestible state.

Otter Browser. In the depths of the tundra Otter in spats...

Part 2. Looking for a fast browser in the Gecko camp

Well, since the Chrome community can’t please us with anything in terms of speed, let’s try to turn to the second opposing side and look at browsers based on the Gecko engine. This engine is no less popular among developers, although it has its own specifics. If on Chromium-based(and Blink) browsers are built mainly by various commercial companies (Otter is a rare exception), then Gecko is more popular among the OpenSource community. Unfortunately, this community, for the most part, is busy changing the basic functionality of Firefox, as a result of which clones of Ognelis (or Firepanda - as you prefer) with different sets of functions are born. Against this background, several projects stand out that make optimized assemblies for certain platforms. Among them, only two focus their efforts on increasing speed Firefox works. The first project is . Within its framework, they make assemblies that work (according to the developers) 25% faster than the original FF. Until recently, the PaleMoon project even had a separate assembly optimized for Windows XP, but due to the discontinuation official support This OS was discontinued. However, to this day there is a separate build for weak machines on Atom base, which can be used on any old computers.
In terms of speed, I was very pleased with PaleMoon - the subjective speed of launching the browser and loading pages on a computer with 1 GB of RAM is even higher than when working with Opera 12 (although it uses a little more memory). The interface, by the way, is rendered noticeably faster than that of its ancestor in the face of FF (the cut Australis has an effect). True, to make the work more convenient, the “lunar” browser will have to be modified a little (in particular, it will have to be turned on in the settings). In general, the impressions from this browser are the most pleasant. Among other things, PaleMoon supports extensions from FireFox, which means expanding its functionality will be quite simple.

Finally, the last contender for the title of “fastest browser for older computers” is the . This project, which appeared at the dawn of the popularity of Firefox, was in hibernation for many years and only recently began to be revived. In essence, this is a very distant relative of Firefox, taking only the Gecko engine from its ancestor. Due to its close relationship, K-Meleon does not support extensions from the original Firefox and does not inherit all its problems (working speed in particular). As a result, we have a very fast and quite functional browser. In terms of operating speed today, K-Meleon is the leader. The only thing that prevents us from definitely recommending it for use is the clumsy interface and the fact that it is overloaded with not all the necessary functions.

K-Meleon 74. The fastest browser…

As a conclusion. Based on the results of many days of testing (including on real users) I personally chose PaleMoon (more precisely, its assembly for Atom). In conditions of severe lack of RAM, it works noticeably faster than all other browsers. On computers with 512 megabytes of RAM, K-Meleon showed the best results in terms of memory consumption, but users in almost 100% of cases complain about its inconvenient interface (read: unusual appearance and non-standard arrangement of controls). In theory, all this can be solved by fine-tuning the interface (fortunately, K-Meleon provides such an opportunity), but in practice the difference in the speed of working with PaleMoon is not so great. The final decision, however, is yours.

Updated March 18, 2016
I tested a couple more programs that claim to be the “fastest browser for an old computer.” My impressions are in .

Updated February 19, 2019
It turns out that enthusiasts continue to make PaleMoon builds that work on older computers. Here, in particular, (you need to download the file mypal-28.3.1.win32.installer.exe).