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siria
Love KM too, since many years, but always interesting to read how it compares and looks from the 'outside'. A viewpoint that I'm completely missing myself, ...
I'm afraid that reading about how it compares and looks from the 'outside' will hardly give you a clear picture because:
1. almost everybody has its own way to use the browser or even the internet.
2. what's important for one, might be irrelevant to someone else.
3. hardware is an important factor.
There are more things to take into consideration but the above are IMO the most important ones which came to my mind.
I have 3 browsers installed, which I use for different tasks. Opera Presto 12.17, FirefoxESR 38.6.0 and K-Meleon 75.1 which I use most of the time.
OS is Win7_x64 running with a quad core processor, 8GB of RAM and 1TB of disc space.
I have absolutely no doubt regarding experiences witnessed by others. That doesn't mean that I'm experiencing the same.
Among the 3 browsers Opera Presto is the lightest on resources (no wonder, since its developement has ceased many years ago) and K-Meleon comes as second.
However differences in resource consumtion among all 3 browsers are small. If you have 8GB of RAM, it's not relevant if 100MB, 300MB, or 500MB will be used by your browser. Nevertheless I still care about resource usage (mostly because I was used to from the times when I had only 250MB at disposal).
Out of curiosity, I've looked to the size of my profile folders. Opera Presto = 331KB, K-Meleon = 14MB, FirefoxESR = 17,7MB.
My HD has 1TB. Imagine what difference it makes if my browser's profile folder has 331KB or 17.7MB.
Nevertheless I would hesitate to install a browser with an installer of 200MB. Not because of disc space but for other reasons. I would ask myself about all the stuff such a browser contains, things I have no need for or I would ask myself about how sluttish it was coded.
As for speed, I can't see any noticeable difference on my fast connection among the 3 browsers. (Maybe worth to be mentioned that for most of the time scripting is disabled in my browsers.)