YouTube + Flash Plugin + Firefox = CPU Cook

[Stephen Coates]

I havn't measured it recently, but I'm pretty sure that meter thing goes up quite a bit when watching flash videos, but it doesn't really make the system noticably slower when doing tasks like looking at other sites.

I probably don't have the latest version of flash installed as I got a popup saying that there is an update and would I like to download it as soon as I switched my computer on.

That alone is enough to annoy me.

Ok, to prove that I'm not totally alone and there is a problem with Flash, this page runs my computer and others CPU up to 100% usage and WARNING: literally locks my PC until I close it:

http://www.lanik.us/misc/ff-flash-test.html

It's nothing more than a page with several embedded flash videos (check the simple source code), none of them set to play. All they are doing is sitting there waiting to be played.

Any page with similar heavy flash content, video or no video, banners, adverts, widgets etc can cause the same effect. Each object uses excessive amounts of CPU.

That link took me to 100%, but still no slowdown.

EDIT: This was with Opera, not with Firefox. Has anyone else experienced this problem with other browsers?