My laptop, at least on paper, beats my desktop in pretty much all specs. Firefox, though, crawls on the laptop and often freezes altogether, while it works great on the desktop. The one significant difference is that the laptop has Vista, while the desktop has XP. Are there some kind of Microsoft shenanigans at work here?
Couple of baseline questions:
- Fresh install of Firefox or installed and upgraded?
- Most current version installed?
- Have you already tried the old “reboot” (remove, reboot, reinstall)?
Firefox does have memory leaks. Don’t leave it open perpetually. Closing and re-opening at least once hourly may help as well as tweaking buffer settings.
I’ve actually tried Vista and haven’t been impressed with it.
It was a fresh install of the then-current version when I first got the laptop. I’ve just sort of gotten used to it, but I thought I’d put it out there, now that we’re tapping the hivemind. 
Probably the one thing I haven’t tried. Does it actually make a difference?
I know about the memory leaks (although the recent versions have improved greatly in that respect).
Closing and re-opening at least once hourly may help as well as tweaking buffer settings.
What buffer settings?
I’ve actually tried Vista and haven’t been impressed with it.
Trust me, neither am I. If I could have found a laptop with XP, I would have gotten it (assuming I didn’t have to pay a premium to do so).
What it does it ensure you are working from a clean slate as opposed to dealing with an unknown variable (such as bad extensions).
There is another solution: Use Chrome.
EDIT: it seems the problem has to do with “auto-tuning” check this out
I meant cache. You want to prevent Firefox from doing read-ahead operations as that becomes very bad for performance on particular variations of sites.
If we’re going to go that far I would imagine Lynx would then be appropriate.
Don’t knock Lynx. Fast as all get out, and it looks like you’re doing work. 
I don’t knock it. I had to use it with that weird access point at the concert last night. Twitter loads quite fast when you go to m.twitter.com with Lynx.
It’s possible that’s an issue, but I doubt it, because the first time I saw the problem, I tried a portable version of Firefox that I’ve tried on both my home and work desktops. The performance problems only occurred on the Vista machine.
There is another solution: Use Chrome.
I’ve tried it. I’m not a fan. It’s got some irritating behaviors – deciding to select things based on its own logic (rather than what I’m actually attempting to select), not allowing dragging, refusing to tile with another window – that bug me more than intermittent issues with Firefox.
EDIT: it seems the problem has to do with “auto-tuning” check this out
I wasn’t clear. It’s not a networking issue – the program itself freezes up on me when I’m using it, whether I’m attempting to view a site or not. I’ve seen suggestions that that’s related to Adobe Flash, although I don’t see any realistic alternative, not to mention that Flash is used in IE as well and doesn’t exhibit this problem.
I had to chuckle when I read this. I’m using Firefox on Vista at work because my IE7 was doing what your Firefox is doing. Gremlins man, it’s gotta be gremlins.
Firefox on Linux runs pretty smoothly.
Just sayin’ …
Unfortunately, I don’t know Linux. Not that I’m not willing or able to learn, but Windows has been “good enough” for my needs since the old days of DOS. I’m also leery of hardware issues with devices designed for Windows, especially as I’m trying to learn a new OS. If I couldn’t access the internet, for instance, how would I figure out how to fix the problem?
You should try a ‘live boot CD’ (or DVD). It lets you boot a complete linux system from a CD/DVD so you can try it out without touching your hard drive. (except for a file to save system preferences.)
Knoppix is a popular one, but there are others, usually specialized for some task.
I’ll say that Ubuntu is an extremely easy version of Linux to install and use. I put it on an older laptop a month or so ago and it installed cleanly and recognized all of my hardware immediately, even my wireless card. (Well, except for a memory stick slot (it’s a Sony laptop) but I kinda expected that.) Firefox runs fine under it.
OTOH, I also run Vista on my main box at home and haven’t had the problem you describe with Firefox under it. The only problem I have there is that sometimes I will exit Firefox then try to start it again only to be told that Firefox is already running. I have to go into Task Manager and kill the old Firefox before I can start it again.
Vector Linux is something else with a LiveCD that is recommended. Vector is slightly more up to date than Knoppix is. Vector’s default user interface also looks quite like Windows.
Failing that, you can also install Ubuntu through Wubi to play with such without getting rid of Vista.
Firefox 2 was really bad about this, but while I’m sure there are still memory leaks, Firefox 3 is a LOT better about memory handling. RMHPH, did you make sure that you upgraded to Firefox 3 on the laptop?
Another explanation for the slowness might be an extension. I would try disabling all extensions, then enabling them one-by-one, restarting Firefox, and making a note of the performance. You may find that a single extension is bogging you down. I remember one of the mouse gesture extensions breaking Firefox 2’s spell checker at one point, so it’s not out of the question that an extension could be interfering and slowing you down.
Oh, and Linux FTW.