O.K. some of it will have to wait until tomorrow when I get the 32 bit Windows 8 box back online.

Right now I have just loaded Chrome onto the #1 64 bit box (3.4GHz quad core with 8GB DDR3/1600MHz). I have opened 4 windows in both Chrome and FF. These are the results:

Chrome - 150.3MB

FF - 176.9MB

Total RAM usage = 18% (1475MB)

TBH I don't expect to see anything significant on this box, given that it has 8GB of RAM. If the memory manager was cutting in now, I would say that it was micromanaging, which would be a bad thing, as I bought the memory to use, not to look at.

The interesting thing will be the legacy 32 bit machine, as it only has 1536MB of RAM. It seemed to be holding that at around the 40% usage mark with FF getting about 65MB. That's basically idle with various apps open.

In that situation, FF does still seem to leak over time. I have just rechecked and FF had increased by 3.7MB as opposed to Chrome's 1MB.

I have an XP Pro and XP Home box going at the moment.

XP Home (1024MB RAM) FF is using 130.9MB

XP Pro (2560MB RAM) FF is using 129.1MB

Interesting that there is no difference despite the large disparity in available RAM. Also that FF is using around twice as much RAM as the 32bit Windows 8 box allowed it.

It seems as if Windows 8 is trying to fit itself into its environment? I don't know if Windows 7 does this? and I know that Vista certainly does not!

I shall have to investigate further........................