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Peter Franks

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 9, 2011
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Although most people on here are telling me to avoid using my Safari 5.1.10 on SL because of security issues, it never made my fan go berserk or utilised so much CPU as Google Chrome does. Is this normal and what can stop it hogging resources? And do I need Google Chrome Helper? And why are there THREE Chrome Helpers in the CPU list
 
Chrome is a resource hog. If you're going to use it, you'll run into those issues.

Why not upgrade to a newer version of OSX?
 
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Although most people on here are telling me to avoid using my Safari 5.1.10 on SL because of security issues, it never made my fan go berserk or utilised so much CPU as Google Chrome does. Is this normal and what can stop it hogging resources? And do I need Google Chrome Helper? And why are there THREE Chrome Helpers in the CPU list

Try Chrome Canary, its far better optimised for OS X

Q-6
 
I'm still on 10.6.8, hence that's the Chrome that works for me, but that 'helper' does what? And can it not be binned?
 
Why can't you just quit using an outdated OS that has unpatched security holes and use something more recent like Yosemite?
Because no one forces him-and that's a good thing. No one attacks Snow Leopard installations. Just too much work. I did not know, that Snow leopard users are the wealthiest people on the earth.

And Yosemite? *lol*

It is also full of "unpatched security holes"-and slow on older (i.e. Mac OS X 10.6.8 compatible) hardware. Check your facts before you post here, thanks!
 
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Because no one forces him-and that's a good thing. No one attacks Snow Leopard installations. Just too much work. I did not know, that Snow leopard users are the wealthiest people on the earth.

And Yosemite? *lol*

It is also full of "unpatched security holes"-and slow on older (i.e. Mac OS X 10.6.8 compatible) hardware. Check your facts before you post here, thanks!
Oh yeah? At least Apple tried to fix them on Yosemite, Mavericks and ML (even if they failed), but they didn't even try fixing them in Snow Leopard. Some publicly-disclosed attacks were patched in Yosemite, but not in SL.

And yes, it will slow down older hardware, but security is paramount (in my opinion as a software engineer) and should take precedence over performance.
 
I'll no doubt have the updated OS in my next MBP whenever that may be but all I read from people with my 2011 model is horror stories on upgrading from Lion to Yosemite so would rather not. Great shame they stopped updating the Safari because it's still the best suited. I've not got on with any others but sadly many sites now won't even entertain the Safari 5.1.10 and the worst offender is Google. I don't know if FF is less of a resource hogger but hear that it is so not bothered with it. Battery is an issue as mine has always been appalling so the overheat from Chrome is a real pain.
 
Google Chrome Helper shows up in your Activity Monitor as you open tabs in Chrome. I currently have nine tabs open right now (nine is light for me and I have 16gb of memory), and I have 14 instances of Google Chrome Helper running. In addition to the helpers, you'll also see an instance of Google Chrome. I'm pretty sure Google has the helper instances so if a tab crashes, it doesn't crash all of your other tabs (maybe security reasons too). It seems like one tab does not necessarily equal one helper.
 
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