... but rebooting and reloading the same set of pages does make it snappy again for a while.... If I bookmark 'em & close 'em, "out of sight, out of mind" takes over and I never get back to them.
You need a session saver. If you want to try Firefox, there's an extension that will remember your open browser windows, those windows' tabs, and each tabs' contents, scroll position, and history. (You can save multiple sessions and load them selectively. And it can recover your session from a browser or system crash.)
That's been built in to Opera for quite a while now, both "saved sessions" (arbitrarily saved/reloaded at the user's whim) and a "continue browsing where you left off?" prompt on startup (which has been around longer). The latter used to be unreliable on some flavours of Windows, but hasn't glitched yet since I upgraded to Opera 8.54 (or maybe not since 8.0, I'm not sure). So when I do reboot I now get back to where I'd been.
Used to be I really hated having to reboot because I had to bookmark everything I wanted back individually, which took forever if the system was already thrashing. Now it's an annoyance but not su much of a chore.
The thing is, I've now also got a bunch of saved sessions waiting for me to remember to get back to them at a time when I don't already have a buttload of stuff already open, just like the bookmarks and text files full of "not done with this, come back when I'm feeling organized" links. So saving my current state and closing everything to free up RAM is approximately as useful as bookmarking it all to get back to (different advantages and disadvantages; a wash all together I think, unless a lot of the pages I'm saving are long enough to really need the scroll positions stored). Note that if I manage to upgrade my own {mental processes|habits|organizational skills}, these browser tools will suddenly become marvelously useful.
(no subject)
You need a session saver. If you want to try Firefox, there's an extension that will remember your open browser windows, those windows' tabs, and each tabs' contents, scroll position, and history. (You can save multiple sessions and load them selectively. And it can recover your session from a browser or system crash.)
(no subject)
Used to be I really hated having to reboot because I had to bookmark everything I wanted back individually, which took forever if the system was already thrashing. Now it's an annoyance but not su much of a chore.
The thing is, I've now also got a bunch of saved sessions waiting for me to remember to get back to them at a time when I don't already have a buttload of stuff already open, just like the bookmarks and text files full of "not done with this, come back when I'm feeling organized" links. So saving my current state and closing everything to free up RAM is approximately as useful as bookmarking it all to get back to (different advantages and disadvantages; a wash all together I think, unless a lot of the pages I'm saving are long enough to really need the scroll positions stored). Note that if I manage to upgrade my own {mental processes|habits|organizational skills}, these browser tools will suddenly become marvelously useful.