Firefox 2.0 uses the same rendering engine as 1.5 so it shouldn't cause a decrease in connection speed. The FasterFox extension, on the other hand, can actually cause webpages to load slower, particularly on dial-up, if prefetching is enabled. (Fasterfox would connect to and download websites, which you may not otherwise view, that are linked to from the page you are viewing, which takes bandwidth.) Thus, you may want to try disabling the extension and see if it makes any difference. If it does then you will want to change the extension's settings, whereas otherwise you can simply re-enable it.
When it comes to memory usage, that varies greatly based on the length of use, installed extensions, and websites being visited. There is also a reported memory leak, where after you leave a webpage the memory it used may not be released immediately. The more you surf and the longer you leave it running the more apparent it will become. It does not pose a problem for the average user, though, and Mozilla is working on finding a way to resolve the issue.
Finally, I'd repost the question about Safari in the Mac OS forum. While it certainly is a browsers question I and most others here have limited experience with it, whereas Pete (mrmacfixit) and those in the Mac forum have greater knowledge and should be able to troubleshoot it better than us.
Good luck.
John
I've used and enjoyed FF since its inception, but after downloading the new FF2, from FF1.5, the page loading has slowed noticeably. I've got an iBook G3, 800mhz, 640ram, 30gig hd, 23 gigs free, Panther 10.3.9, with a dial-up connection. The dial-up is terrible of course, but my connection speeds are usually 48kbps; not too bad. I also have the Faster Fox extension, which should help. I know these issues are very subjective, but I'm convinced it's slower. So I thought I'd try Safari. After downloading Safari 1.0 and opening the bsd, I'm stopped after selecting to install it to the hd; the flag message says 'cannot be installed at this location'. But no other choices are available, and I'm certain I'm doing it correctly. Any thoughts on these issues? I also am wondering why FF rates some 50MB in the 'get info' window - Isn't that very 'heavy' for a browser? Thanks much.
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