Science of the Invisible - Latest Comments in I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

AJCann — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:15:06 -0000

I'm afraid I have to disagree Evan. I carried out the procedure above, Flock speeded up to it's initial snappy level and now I'm not planning on abandoning it. Clearly the "flock.metrics.enabled" setting is a problem.

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

Evan Hamilton — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:30:41 -0000

Hey AJ,

Sorry to hear that you're thinking about abandoning Flock. Obviously speed is really important when browsing, and I can understand your frustration if you're experiencing slowdowns.

Your speed issues are definitely NOT caused by our anonymous collection metrics...this won't affect your browsing experience.

There are a few things we can do to try to increase performance in Flock, but the first thing I'd actually recommend is what James mentioned, trying the Flock 2 Beta (one), which is powered by the same technology as Firefox 3. Flock 2 is significantly faster, and you can read more on it (and download the beta) at http://www.flock.com/beta/d...

If you do try the beta, PLEASE back up your profile. There are some issues in the beta with favorites not transferring, which will be fixed in Beta 2.

I hope this is helpful and you'll stick around. We want to make your browsing experience as great as possible, and I certainly don't want performance to be the issue holding you back from Flock.

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

CannonGod — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:57:07 -0000

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. IE feels buggy, FireFox is quite hardcore but lacks the niceties, Opera feels too clinical & Flock is like a feather pillow. In my experience, Safari (albeit for Windows) was the best browser. It was pretty darn quick, and made everything on the web look gorgeous. Only for the fact it doesn't have some of the little features I can't come to live without that I turn back to FireFox 3. When Safari 4 surfaces I hope to god it has proper extension/addon support for the Windows version, because their SquirrelFish engine looks set to be the fasted renderer (http://www.tgdaily.com/cont...

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

Liam Green-Hughes — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:02:30 -0000

Looks like it is, although you can switch it off. From digging around the Flock site it appears to be doing two types of phoning home, firstly to check for updates, and secondly to collect usage statistics (although this may have been disabled during installation. This appears on http://flock.com/privacy "In connection with the auto-update feature, the Flock browser also sends Flock non-personally identifying information about how our users are using the Flock browser and which features our most popular, enabling us to improve the Flock Products." So as Flock gets more popular there could be a possibility this would slow it down? Turning this off is possible see: http://flock.com/faq/show/3... but I think they should include a simpler way to do this.

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

AJCann — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:49:29 -0000

The issue I have with Flock is why is it getting progressively slower for me?

The other thing is that there are intangible (at least to me) qualities in different browsers, and I just like Flock. FF is a big, rufty-tufty browser, Flock feels softer and smoother. Everybody say Awww...

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

James Clay — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:32:38 -0000

Not tried it myself yet, but have you tried the Flock beta based on FF3?

James

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

AJCann — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:18:59 -0000

Well, I'll hang on for a bit. What about the phoning home issue - is that true?

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

CannonGod — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:14:17 -0000

I liked what Flock was doing, but with issues over speed and the fact that I like to check around my various social nets through their own websites - having them all together amounts no more to me than just using Twhirl with Twitter + FriendFeed + Seesmic. Everything else of importance like comments left on Facebook, YouTube or Flickr end up in my email inbox anyway for later checking.

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

Gill — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:52:54 -0000

Agree. Also, Flock uses so much processing power I'm concerned that my laptop will overheat. The fan is whirring away constantly. However I'm sticking with it a little longer. I really like the integration of social networking sites and the ease with which I can post to different blogs (for those of us with more than one blog). I'm hanging on like Liam suggests for Flock 2.

Re: I'm getting close to abandoning Flock

Liam Green-Hughes — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:41:21 -0000

You might want to hang on for a bit! Flock 2 is just around the corner. Based on Firefox 3 this should offer some speed (and memory usage) improvements, details are here: http://flock.com/node/62538. Haven't tried it yet but keeping my fingers crossed that this will address the issues you raise and also help Flock grow.