First off, my browser of choice for as long as I can remember has been Mozilla's Firefox. It's a great browser, fast, highly customisable, stable and secure. So, when I heard about Pale Moon, I was mighty excited. Pale Moon looks like Firefox, acts like Firefox and is indeed 100% Mozilla Firefox code, however, before you ask "whats the point" or "what's different then" just let me explain.
Firefox for all its good points has been a bit bloated on the memory resource front these last few years. It takes what seems like an age to load up, and can hog huge chunks of valuable memory. What the Pale Moon project have done is gone through the code, taken out all the system processes that are not 64-bit, cut out all the unnecessary crap and turned a brilliant browser into an awesome browser.
What we have with Pale Moon is a browser much lighter on resources, much faster due to being aimed specifically at 64-bit users and compatible with all your favourite Firefox add-ons. Pale Moon also have a version for standard 32-bit processors, and I use this in the office in work, again its much lighter on resources which means my work PC doesn't grind to a halt all the time now compared to when it did with Firefox.
Overall then, if you're looking for something fast, secure, modern, light on resources and reliable, Pale Moon should fill your needs. You have to use it to really appreciate it, but those little tweaks really do make a huge difference.
Mark Adams
25-01-12
