Chrome's next update makes it less resource hungry
A big part of what's won Chrome a lot of converts is how much faster it is over the competition. That speed comes at a price, though: The web browser is notoriously a resource hog (especially if you have a dozen or so tabs open at once) and it dramatically cuts into battery life. As Google tells it, the latest version of the browser will help absolve those sins a bit. New tweaks include restoring only the most frequently used tabs should it detect that your machine is precariously low on resources, and a way of detecting when a page isn't busy with something else and using the free processor cycles to clean up idle memory.
That, coupled with pausing crap like auto-playing Flash ads can free up somewhere around 10 percent of memory usage on average, with a Gmail tab using a whopping 25 percent less memory. There's video below in case you wanted proof. Mountain View says that it'll activate these new features as default over the next few weeks. Something tells me that this probably still won't stop Apple from crowing about how much battery life you can save by using Safari anytime soon.
[Image credit: Photothek via Getty Images]
