[Closed] Is anyone else's PC getting ragged by this site?

but STW *prides* itself on a ropey website yes?

How do you turn off the ads?

Can it be done with NoScript?

I know the ads are a source of revenue, but it's getting beyond a joke when they are hogging so much of the system resources. Fine line - satisfy your advertisers and alienate your customers?

Grrrr...

Without wanting to sound too much like a Charlie Brooker hate character, it seems to run fine on a mac under both Firefox and Safari. Maybe STW towers is all OS X?
That cotic backdrop is a bit richard whiteley tie though.

How do you turn off the ads?

cant tell you. It's in the rools.

geoff - what mac do you have and is is set up with shedloads of ram for photoshopping etc?

I have 2Gb in a 5 year old machine. It shouldnt matter. A website shouldnt be ripping its tits off like STW does.

Aye but the rules don't prohibit you from sending me an email...

😀

It's pissing me off so much that I'll never buy a bike from a manufacturer whose name begins with C.

Currently on a MacBook 2.4 ghz with 4 gb of ram, but I usually use a Samsung NC10 with 2 gig and its fine on that - I'm not on Snow Leopard yet though.

nope, no issues here. Vista and running firefox. CPU runs at max 30% to drive firefox, but bounces between 10-30%. Core2duo/2.2GHz, 2Gb RAM... nothing super special.

Are you running AVG by any chance?

yes

Ive just disabled it, and still 80% of CPU time is being used to run these damn flash ads.

killing the environment also with the extra power required.

Tsk tsk!

bloody hell how long has that cotic banner been there?
lol 😆

My CPU is barely registering this site...

what OS are you running nick?

I get the same results as Stoner.

XP Pro SP3
Firefox 3.5.3

argh. so narked off with this now. Im off to bed.

I really want to run chrome as my default browser but because it doesn't have an effective adblocker yet and I have STW open all the time I cant use it - I have to stick with FF.

Its a pretty poor show when your choice of browser is mainly driven by the behaviour of one website.

I remain convinced the behaviour of the ads on this site is counterproductive.

Im on Vista, a pentium 4 2.8ghz CPU, nothing special in the graphics card stakes and 2Gb of RAM.

Back in the day you could run a space station on one of these. Now I cant even run a forum of middle-aged witterings. That's progress I suppose....

Well on my macbook pro the flashplayer and safari combined total of the cpu is between 30-60% for this site. Quite ridiculous.

Not now

Not on this PC, but on both my others - one which is a quad core and one which is a PIII. The PIII is ground to a halt with it. I assume it depends on software versions?

No problems here on a 2Ghz T6400, so nothing flashy. CPU under 10%.

Vista SP2, Firefox, Avast.

I'm OK Jack! I have 4 cores with water cooling and I've never been able to load it hard enough to make the fans speed up, even at 100% usage :o)

Sorry, somewhere else, Firefox, XP, Boggo spec Dell, nothing spectacular

There's a number of sites that at times are almost impossible to navigate without some assistance - this one and the Telegraph are the most significant IMO.

I personally have taken to mainly watching the [url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/rss/ ]main forum RSS feed [/url]instead of browsing the normal topic list page since the Cotic background appeared. 🙁

Is there any chance that SingleTrack could perhaps have a higher priced mag subscription which allowed the purchaser to tick a box in their userprefs and remove the ads?

since the Cotic background appeared.

I mentally tuned that out in about 10 seconds. I quite like the shaded grey 🙂

Absolutely kills my old laptop. All the fans come on max and the whole thing runs like a dog.
completely unusable with the ads on.

Fine on my main desktop PC and work PC (even when I allow the ads and don't re-jig the layout)
Though it does seem to randomly crash firefox on both PCs. 🙄

Also fine on my iPhone.

simonfbarnes - Member
I mentally tuned that out in about 10 seconds. I quite like the shaded grey

No it's not that I don't like it, it looks fine - I actually quite like it.

It's that type of static CSS background which stays still when the rest of the content scrolls - it makes scrolling the page really jerky

Yeah that was discussed earlier in the Cotic thread. No real idea why something staying still would make the scrolling jerky. Fine on my PCs but a few people have reported it and TomDB was investigating.

My PC runs fine. But then I have two Cotic's so it probably knows to be kind to me 😆

Background image shouldn't add any drain to the CPU once loaded.

Flash? Well Adobe have made lots of really bad performing plug-ins for all sorts of browsers. If you've got one of their bad ones then a couple of flash ads can work your machine real hard. Recent versions of Firefox paired with older versions of flash can be a real pain.

Nah it's bad on my laptop even with latest firefox and latest version of flash.

No idea why the static cotic background is causing some folk issues, but it apparently is. I did suggest that having a fixed background overlayed over a scrolling one might be the issue, but not so according to Tom so all very odd.

Actually if you google "fixed background jerky scrolling" you get 3,500 hits so it may be a common problem.

Vista 64, 3.0GHz Core 2 Quad, 12GB DDR3, Quad 150GB Raptors, IE8.

8% CPU with all the adds turned on.

on an old ibook G4 with 1GB Ram, firefox uses 7% with just googlemail open, if i open another tab with stw, shoots up to about 80% 😯

shut stw down and went to the NSMB forum, CPU usage dropped to around 20%

ps i'll never even consider a charge purely because of those adverts!

[b]Vista 64, 3.0GHz Core 2 Quad, 12GB DDR3[/b], Quad 150GB Raptors, IE8.

8% CPU with all the adds turned on.

I should hope so too!
You could start WWIII with that setup!

Still crap this morning then.

[i]Actually if you google "fixed background jerky scrolling" you get 3,500 hits so it may be a common problem.[/i]

I typed in "having sex with a koala bear while singingbohemium rhapsody and talking to anthea turner on skype"

and got 444,000 hits.

rags the hell out of my pc (or did - have yet to try it with the new set up) - could happily run lightroom and photoshop together processing images and no bohter. open up STW with one window (and no other programs running) and you can literally hear the system fan ramp up a notch and watch your resources drain away in memory management thingy in windows...quite booldy annoying...and counterproductive for the advertisers as I would rather sleep with Jordan and stick pins up my jacksie than visit the advert sites that are causing it (and I know they cause it cause they are turned off in browser at work and no problems in a lesser specced machine)

Vista 64, 3.0GHz Core 2 Quad, 12GB DDR3, Quad 150GB Raptors, IE8.

8% CPU with all the adds turned on.

Crikey! What do you use that for?

I saw ban Stoner for this filth anyway (actually this site does make my puter go nuts - Macbook with 2g ram on safari here).

Try keeping another browser spare to view STW etc but don't load or install flashplayer etc so you don't see all the flashy stuff that grabs your graphics processing power.

Or upgrade your video card tha has onboard processing if your pc is a pci x16 slot for graphics and dual core+. Otherwise don't bother upgrading as new gear is on the horizion with USB 3 etc.

Im using a 256Mb Geoforce 6400.

Not amazing, but its not like Im gaming or anything.

And why on earth would one have to upgrade a video card just to view a website?

Try keeping another browser spare to view STW etc but don't load or install flashplayer etc so you don't see all the flashy stuff that grabs your graphics processing power.

thats a more likley solution for now. FF running STW with ads blocked and Chrome managing everything else. Bit of an arse muddle though really.

It's called computer progress mate - you need more hardware and energy to do the same old job 🙄

I've just hit 97% Chrome and XP but it is only a netbook. Having said that it's dropping as low as 6% as well.

I have my man servant print the threads I am interested in reading and he then presents them to me in a lovely bound hardback book

I typed in "having sex with a koala bear while singingbohemium rhapsody and talking to anthea turner on skype"
and got 444,000 hits

doesn't everyone do that ?

Right click the CRC ads and select Quality>>Low to turn off antialiasing on these ads.

Should speed things up a bit.

I typed in "having sex with a koala bear while singingbohemium rhapsody and talking to anthea turner on skype"

Well true, but the results I get are definitely relevant to the subject, whereas in the results from that search over half of them were actually about [i]"having sex with anthea turner while singing bohemian rhapsody to a koala bear on skype"[/i]. 🙄

I can't help with the flash, other than to beg advertisers to either not use flash, or improve their actionscript skills.

Right, background image: could someone with the scroll problem check [url= http://twitter.com/CoticLtd ]this page[/url] and see if they get the same problem? Would like to know if it's a general fixed background problem, or the way Singletrack have implemented the ad on this site. Thanks.

zaskar - Member

Try keeping another browser spare to view STW etc but don't load or install flashplayer etc so you don't see all the flashy stuff that grabs your graphics processing power.

Or upgrade your video card tha has onboard processing if your pc is a pci x16 slot for graphics and dual core+. Otherwise don't bother upgrading as new gear is on the horizion with USB 3 etc.

muddy_bum - Member

Right click the CRC ads and select Quality>>Low to turn off antialiasing on these ads.

Should speed things up a bit.

Why should we have to do these things? It's only a bloody website FFS! Are you seriously considering people should upgrade their graphics cards JUST so that they can see a forum-based website?

PC at home is a 3.2gig quad with 8 gigs of ram on vista 64 and even that perks up a little bit. 2.8gig duo laptop with 3 GB ram at work on XP32 goes nuts, and my old 1.6 duo with 1.5 gb ram falls over. Funnily enough all this goes away with one click of a button. That button either being closing the site (and not seeing the adverts), or using a certain program, and not seeing the adverts. Basically to use this site effectively I have to turn the adverts off. If I don't do that, then I can't use it at all

Update Adobe Flash Player to the latest and greatest.

You can [url= http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/155/tn_15507.html ]check what version of Flash you have installed here[/url].

Latest version is 10.0.32.18

I still see the same issues even with the latest version. Can others with issues report what version they have and if they see any improvement from updating to the latest one?

Core i7 920 @ 2.66Ghz , 6Gb DDR3 , Twin 250Gb HDD's and a GTX260

runs Firefox at 6 to 8% CPU and IE alongside at the same time @ 6 to 8% and thats with Photoshop, DPP RAW Image Viewer and Media Player running with visuals ...

[url=

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/donboyfisher/various/cpu.jp g" rel="nofollow" >

i'll get me coat...[/url]

I often view it with the ads bar disappeared off the RHS (shrink the window) and use the slider. Much less irriating also.. When I run task manger and view the CPU usage, there is clearly less CPU useage when the moving ads are off the edge of the window. I guess Windows decided not to bother computing that bit.

Is this reasonable? it's funny because Mrs Mc asked me the same the other day regarding a different site and I didn't know the answer.

I still don't understand why everyone just doesn't run Firefox and Flashdance - the whole internet experience is so much better...

I have no problem with Ads, but cannot stand embedded Flash.

No problems at all with Laptop or Desktop with running Windows and Firefox.

footflaps: I suggest you edit your last post. The discussion of ad blocking technology is verboten in the forum rules. This thread (despite being helpful and needing to be discussed IMO) is probably already sailing dangerously close to the wind and mention of specific technologies by name will tip it over 🙂

kelvin - Member

I can't help with the flash, other than to beg advertisers to either not use flash, or improve their actionscript skills.

Right, background image: could someone with the scroll problem check this page and see if they get the same problem? Would like to know if it's a general fixed background problem, or the way Singletrack have implemented the ad on this site. Thanks.

Yep, same problem. I think I've previously reported it to Mozilla and the WebKit folks, will try and dig out the bug #s this evening

Imagine connecting to another PC with VNC, then browsing the web on the remote machine. That's what it's like.

Just thought I'd add... I am running a totally pimped 15" MacBook Pro and always know when STW is open in the backround 'cause the fans spin up with ether peasant graphics card or the 512M one running.

Seems a bit silly to me.

PS I think the Cotic thing is pretty cool.

I still don't understand why everyone just doesn't run Firefox and Flashdance - the whole internet experience is so much better...

The one time I was banned from here for discussing blocking ads (I suspect describing exactly what I did would get me banned again) I had a lengthy discussion with Mark about the reason I had a problem with ads on here, the net result being that he did kick some backsides and make it a bit more sane for a while. I think maybe it's time to do as you suggest though and revert to FF (to be fair the latest version of that is much better than when Chrome came out, so not really any downsides apart from that I've got used to Chrome). Assuming the mods are reading this, I'll just point out again - though you should have got it by now - that like many on here I don't have any problem with ads at all as long as they're not busy making my CPU churn away. Meanwhile, whatever the stats might say, personally I'm far less likely to pay attention to a Flash ad simply because they're so irritating.

2.6ghz, 4 gig RAM MacBook here.
Forum [i]used t[/i]o take 90% + of cpu.
Now down at more like 2.5%...

Aye, my home PC, Windows XP SP3, latest Firefox browser, struggles with STW & often hangs.
Close the window & open a new one, and it eventually does the same. When i looked at the CPU/memory loading, it was either Firefox going mental or the anti-virus (AVAST) software, so maybe anti-virus progs have an issue with something on the page?
I haven't seen it do it on other websites i use.

I use Avast too but still no problems.

I wonder if keeping video card drivers update would help?

Probably not though.

Forum used to take 90% + of cpu.

wowser. I'll get banned again if I pass any comment but wowser.

I just installed (after reading this thread) Chrome v4.0 and cpu usage has dropped from 90%+ to under 70% I have been getting over to flash crashes a day.

And apparently certain things that arnt to be mentioned on this forum work with V4 😉

http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_chrome/

kelvin - same problem with your cotic page as on here, although TBH I get a similar scroll problem with twitter pages anyway.

Graham - I always run uptodate Flash app in a futile effort to solve this problem, to no avail 🙁

Vista 64, 3.0GHz Core 2 Quad, 12GB DDR3, Quad 150GB Raptors, IE8.

8% CPU with all the adds turned on.

Well if i'm reading this right you have 8 cores in there so 1 of them flat out is 12.5%, means you are caning one of them!!

For me its that Cotic banner, using Firefox. <CTRL +> until the forum fills the page and the scrolling is much better.

In case this gets read later, I found this thread after I started another one... and at the end of [i]my[/i] thread 8) there's a response from Mark (Administrator).

Here it is: [url] http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/stw-flash-ads-ate-my-computer [/url]

So, it's a bit better now.

al.