I think I found a way to describe my problem with Firefox:

Now, this just came to me, so I haven't hashed it out in my head yet, but, I'll try...


When I was looking at upgrading some software on my Laptop, which, I think this was around January this year, I was trying to think of what all to put on it. Basically I wanted to be able to Check Mail, and Surf, and have more than a few Email accounts accessible on my Laptop with Windows XP.

I already had Opera on there, and I had Seamonkey and the mail clients that are in both, but I was looking to try out something from the Firefox people because I kept hearing how Thunderbird was sooooooo neat.

The Laptop is a Pentium 4M @ 3.06 GHz, single core, regular, no special neat stuff, just a normal P4M, and it has 512 MBs of RAM.

I went to the site for Thunderbird, and I was looking at the software we call Thunderbird, and I wanted to make sure it would be OK, so, I checked the "System Resources". I couldn't find them anywhere at first, because they weren't listed next to the statement that "We built Thunderbird for the good of all people and used a cigarette lighter and circuit board to weld it together and we think it's the best thing ever and anyone not using it is insecure and probably dating their cousin"....

Finally I found the specs needed... I was SHOCKED that Thunderbird 3, REQUIRED A MINIMUM of 1 GB of RAM (More was recommended) and basically, somehow, an EMAIL CLIENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Had BIGGER system resources.... BIGGER requirements, then DooM 3, which is a GAME....

I sat there wondering to myself basically "How does an EMAIL Client, need more RAM and CPU power, than DooM3, Quake 4, Linux, BSD, and Unix, and in some cases, combined?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!"....

Can someone explain to me, who thinks that is absurd, how an Email Client can require more System Resources than Windows XP, Windows 2000, basically any version of Linux, and All BSD OSs combined? You could run literally 4 different versions of BSD in LESS RAM than you'd need for Thunderbird.

I can use Slackware Linux as an FTP Server, and Email Server, a Web Server, and a Desktop, in LESS RAM than Thunderbird? HOW is that possible?

I can put Slackware on a 486 still.... I can put FreeBSD on a Cell Phone.... I can't get Thunderbird on something running an ENTIRE OS? and by run I don't mean Walk, I have Slackware running right now on a machine that can't even load an installer for Thunderbird.

I thought XP had some resource needs, but that's a WHOLE OS!

I think that was my issue.

I now have a machine with 4 GBs of RAM, and a Core 2 Duo Processor, and Thunderbird takes longer to load than both Seamonkey and Opera combined. Unreal Tournament doesn't take that long. And it's got WAY more.

Why does it need so much? It doesn't look nice, it doesn't have a game built in, it just checks email with TABS??@?@?@?@!!!!?

Opera has Tabbed Mail, and has since I can remember!