I also wonder about "memory problems", but of the soft kind. I like to consuming "pages" of content at a time, spread between many tabs. Usually I read to the bottom of a "page", and then switch tabs. When I come back to that tab, I'm ready to go to the next page.
But with infinite scrolling, I feel like I'd be re-reading content to find my exact spot I left off..
Remember the old printers, and how the paper had holes on the sides, and was just one continuous sheet? Imagine if magazines were printed that way, so you didn't flip pages, but instead you just kept folding back a part of the endless paper and reading on.
That's how I feel with infinite scroll. I like flipping magazine pages like I enjoy clicking links. I don't know what it is exactly, it just feels more natural, and organized.
There are exceptions though. If I'm using an iPhone, endlessly scrolling through my inbox, or song list (with the ability to tap to a particular letter), works incredibly well. Then again, touch screens in general feel great with infinite scroll. It's a tricky situation, and really depends on the device and content.
I guess not, although the page number is shown for you to see which page you are on, but you may forget where you were after you visit a particular link. It's improved to resolve the memory issue, I think. So when you browsed to page 10 and want to get back to page 3, it will reload for you seamlessly, rather than let the browser to keep all the pages in memory.
I agree the parent post, I'd like to keep where I was when I open each link in a new tab. Then the infinite scroll just helps to eliminate the click of the next page.
That's a problem that can be solved by paginating the data and using the history api to push the page state on the stack while the UI seamlessly loads the pages together.
But with infinite scrolling, I feel like I'd be re-reading content to find my exact spot I left off..