Cut your browser's RAM usage with All Browsers Memory Zip

All Browsers Memory Zip is a free memory optimizer designed to cut your browser’s RAM usage. The program doesn’t just work with Chrome, IE or Firefox -- it recognizes and supports almost 40 browsers, out of the box.

Once installed, All Browsers Memory Zip monitors your running processes, looking out for supported browsers and checking their RAM usage.

If a browser’s memory use edges over a defined figure, the developer says the program steps in and "compresses" the RAM.

Memory "compression" sounds intriguing. Technical. Advanced. But from what we can see, it isn’t true. It looks to us that All Browsers Memory Zip just uses the same "cut your working set" Windows system call as just about every other RAM optimizer.

Does it work? Well, in a way. Once it’s running, the program really does kick in whenever RAM use goes above a set figure, and if you watch this in Task Manager you can see it fall immediately afterwards.

The problem is that the default settings are so very low, only 30MB for Chrome, that your browser almost certainly needs this RAM. What we found happened in practice is that RAM use would reach the threshold, drop a little, then climb up to the threshold again in a few seconds. The more browser tabs you open, the faster the cycle, and the more CPU and disk I/O you’re generating as All Browsers Memory Zip and Windows struggle to cope.

This doesn’t necessarily make the program useless. The "maximum RAM" thresholds can be tweaked to whatever you like, and if you set them to something more realistic -- 500MB for Chrome, say, or whatever is a sensible maximum for you -- then you’re much less likely to run into problems.

Overall, All Browsers Memory Zip isn’t going to win over any doubters (including us). But its built-in browser support is an unusual touch, and if this kind of tool has helped you before then we’d give it a try.

All Browsers Memory Zip is a free application for Windows XP and later.