Yeah, you're right, I didn't realise they'd improved it so. Start up was really suffering at one point, it's nippy, I'm wrong.
I think the major reason this myth has stayed in my mind is doing upgrades on startup, testing FF v Chrome just now, on a computer that FF has never been the primary browser, they're very similar in terms of responsiveness (FF still a little slower if I'm honest, but trivially and I think it's a bit psychological in the way it opens the window compared to Chrome). I'm not seeing major differences on disabling/enabling firebug though.
Right now every time I open FF it seems to upgrade, because I do it so rarely. So in my mind it's now become intolerably slow and I only open it when I really, really need 3 different sessions on a single site. I use Chrome as primary, IE secondary (due to it being more likely to have quirks and historically preferring IE dev toolbar to firebug).
As Chrome upgrades in the background and IE does it through windows update you're not playing on a fair playing field I guess.
EDIT: I should add this isn't exactly a modern computer, no SSD, 2.4ghz quad core, 3Gb RAM and my laptop's even more in need of an upgrade.
When I boot my computer, it's a little slow at first when opening applications, so differences are very noticeable.
On this computer I'm using, Firefox 9 starts faster.
Also, this version on my computer upgrades in the background. I just get a "restart" notice when it finishes, then after I restart it checks for addons updates, in case some of them are invalid, but that's pretty fast too. And these upgrades don't happen so ofter.
I think the major reason this myth has stayed in my mind is doing upgrades on startup, testing FF v Chrome just now, on a computer that FF has never been the primary browser, they're very similar in terms of responsiveness (FF still a little slower if I'm honest, but trivially and I think it's a bit psychological in the way it opens the window compared to Chrome). I'm not seeing major differences on disabling/enabling firebug though.
Right now every time I open FF it seems to upgrade, because I do it so rarely. So in my mind it's now become intolerably slow and I only open it when I really, really need 3 different sessions on a single site. I use Chrome as primary, IE secondary (due to it being more likely to have quirks and historically preferring IE dev toolbar to firebug).
As Chrome upgrades in the background and IE does it through windows update you're not playing on a fair playing field I guess.
EDIT: I should add this isn't exactly a modern computer, no SSD, 2.4ghz quad core, 3Gb RAM and my laptop's even more in need of an upgrade.