Best Browser For Old/Slowing Snow Leopard?

Have you tried emptying the cache on Safari? Safari menu>empty cache.

Have you cleaned out the cookies and web data.

Safari preferences>Privacy tab>Remove all website data.

Here are a few to check out. I only use Firefox and Safari.

Pure Mac: Web Browsers - Software for Macintosh

Your machine will take up to 6 GB of RAM if you wanted to take an alternate view of the situation.

I avoid Chrome like the plague because of its link to Google and the multitude of extentions, many of which are a nuisance with each other and my apps.

Another thing to check is going to system preferences/accounts, llogin tab and make sure that here is nothing launching that you are not aware of, that is eating RAM.

Gogle things have caused me nothing but problems>

(Maybe way off base , but it won't hurt to check)

Maxthon is the best alternative option.

www.maxthon.com

Personally, I would ditch any Google software, including, Chrome as it is a total OS X resource hog.

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95319?hl=en

I have, also, stopped using the Google search engine regularly (due to Google's privacy policies or lack thereof) and I now use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine.

Also,your OS X 10.6 version of Safari is out of date and has not had any security updates for quite awhile.

Your best bet is to just stay using Moziila FireFox, and no other browser, as it gets regularly updated by the great developers of the Mozilla group.

The current, up-to-date version of FireFox is STILL fully compatible with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Also, as previously mentioned, your year and model Mac can take up to 6 GBs of RAM.

This will speed up processes considerably and will help alleviate some of your slowdown issues.

If you live in the U.S. , Correct, compatible and reliable Mac RAM can be purchased from online Mac RAM sources Crucial memory or OWC (macsales.com).

OWC (macsales.com) has the proper RAM module or kit needed to get your Mac to the 6 GB RAM total limit.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/6400DDR2S6GP/

RAM is user installable and is, relatively, easy to install be newbie and novice Mac users.

http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/imac_mid_2007_mem_h/

Good Luck!

One thing that no-one has mentioned :

Safari is the CPU hog that it is, almost solely because of Flash. If you use a freeware Safari extension called "ClickToPlugin", it disables Flash and other plugins from loading their pesky content and displays the (e.g.) video as a blank grey window. The content doesn't load and play until you click on that. However it allows you to create a list of website exceptions such as BBC iPlayer and YouTube for example, so that their content always loads automatically.

I think the real issue is that while 2GB was sufficient back in 2008, it no longer is the case. Current browsers are ever-improving, and with new security threats being released on a daily basis, the browsers are becoming more resource intense to protect against these threats. In 6 years we've gone from Chrome 1 to Chrome 43, Firefox 3 to Firefox 38.

The other issue is that web pages are becoming more Web 2.0, and more interactive. Simply watching a YouTube video can consume 500MB-1GB RAM.

You can double your RAM and upgrade to 4GB for only $50: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/Intel_Core_2_Duo_PC2-6400

sdfox7 wrote:

I think the real issue is that while 2GB was sufficient back in 2008, it no longer is the case. Current browsers are ever-improving, and with new security threats being released on a daily basis, the browsers are becoming more resource intense to protect against these threats. In 6 years we've gone from Chrome 1 to Chrome 43, Firefox 3 to Firefox 38.

You can double your RAM and upgrade to 4GB for only $50: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/Intel_Core_2_Duo_PC2-6400

This. 2GB of RAM is skimpy. Doubling it will help.

I think I agree with MichelPm...go with Firefox almost exclusively due to it being open source and the continual security updates. Maybe keep Safari just for kicks, but be aware as stated, that it's not being updated by Apple. I still use it mostly and haven't had any security issues. However, almost all of my "financial" web sites keep telling me my browser is out of date; that I'm not getting all their web sites' features. (Shame on Apple for not updating Safari, at least every now and then.)

The Maxthon cloud browser looks interesting.

Since you have four browsers installed on your Mac, leads me to believe your machine might be bloated with other apps. If it's mostly going to be for your dad, perhaps you could get rid of some apps to speed up your Mac overall; especially if you're not going to add RAM. One pretty good free utility is App Cleaner.app. Does a pretty good job removing "all" of an app, including associated .plist files.

Also, as recommended, check for login (startup) items that might be slowing your Mac.

Firefox used to be a beautiful web browser, but it has become a bloated monster, with features that belong in plugins or extensions hardwired into the core feature-set, and capable of bringing my computer to its knees more effectively than running Safari, Eclipse, and iTunes simultaneously. I think I would rather use SeaMonkey than use Firefox, at this point.

SeaMonkey used to be named "Mozilla Suite", and uses the same rendering engine as Firefox, so any page that works for one should work for the other. At least SeaMonkey doesn't pretend to be only a web browser; it's an all-in-one Internet Application Suite, with an integrated mail/netnews client, IRC client, HTML editor, DOM inspector, and JavaScript debugger. And its disk footprint is still smaller than that of Firefox. In fact, Firefox started out as "SeaMonkey with everything but the browser taken out", so you know that some serious bloat has happened since.

I'm using Firefox on every Intel Mac I have, and none of them are "brought to their knees" by it. I have no Macs newer than 2012, but the least amount of installed RAM is 8GB, on one machine. Everything else 16GB or more. I wonder if that makes a difference.