Extreme Long Waiting Time of FireFox

I just got an Aspire One (Linux) last week. The first thing I tried was connecting to the Web through wireless LAN. Unfortunately, the experience is so unbearable - it took about 3 min for the Yahoo to show up. Then it works normally for a minute or two. But then again, it took several minutes waiting for the new page to come up. So I checked the connection by pinging the same site while the FireFox is waiting. Suprisingly, the result was perfect - no packet lost and all response is within 150ms! I tried to download the Skype from the Aspire One download site and all data came through in 3 mins. But browsing that same site took me almost 15 mins.

It must have been the FireFox. But what is it? Anybody has any idea? I love this machine and really don't want to return it. And I don't want to spent any money on Microsoft - not a single penny. But what I need the Aspire One is for Web Browsing, Google Map, Hot Mail, and Skype. Without FireFox functioning normally, this machine would be useless to me.

Any hint, pointer, suggestion would be highly appreciated!

 

All I can say is it does not sound like a hardware problem to me.

 

Have you tried removing ff and installing it again?

 

I'm not so sure that I want to reinstall FireFox right now. The version I have got is right out of the box. Should there be any problem, everyone else who has got a ZG5 would have the same problem too. But than again, nobody said anything about this issue.

I installed gnome-system-monitor and took a look at the network performance during this "extreme long waiting" time. There is nothing unusal - except there is nothing neither transmitted nor received. Nothing on the net at all! But both CPU cores were quite busy, arround 50% to 60% usuage. The monitor itself shouldn't take more than 5% of one core.

One possible reason which might convince me that reinstallation could save the day is that I can find data corruption on the SSD. I never trust NAND Flash type of products. The cost down is so bloody in that field, and I know quite a few players just throwing "Quality Control" totally out of the window. Anybody knows whose SSD Controller AAO ZG5 uses and if there were any datasheet I could find about it? With such information, I might be able to figure out how to test the integrity of my SSD. Otherwise, fsck is the only tool left.

 

Or a poorly configured router.

 

Well, I say the FireFox is extremely slow is because I compared it side by side with another notebook installed with Fedora, both in my office and at home. So I believe the WAN related factors are not related here.

 

Well that does seem a little strange, and I know you have probably heard people telling you to uninstall and reinstall multiple times by now, but that is really all that I can think of. I did get a good laugh over your unwillingness to spend any money on Microsoft, but I do wonder why that is. Thank you for the quick laugh, though, regardless. I hope that you find your answer, because I certainly understand your frustration and not wanting to return something you just got. Best of luck.

 

What is your anti-virus? Our home desktop started getting slow with Firefox when we installed the free anti-virus AVG. At first, we didn't suspect because we usually boot the computer while doing something else and then go back to the computer later. But then we spotted the red hard disk indicator that it was lighted for so long when we run Firefox (it is the default browser). What we did was to disconnect the internet cable when booting. Voila, there emerged the message from AVG that it failed to update. So that's it. The AVG was updating by itself with the use of the default browser. So now we use the Chrome and it comes clean because it is not the default browser that AVG can ride on to update itself.

 

I have used Firefox with Linux and it wasn't slow. In fact, it's faster than using Firefox on Windows. I think you need to make some comparisons. Install a few more browsers and try them out. You can install Chrome and Opera. If the problem persists, then there's something wrong with the laptop settings for internet connection. If the problem only exists for Firefox, then there's something wrong with the Firefox settings.