As most of you probably know, starting with Diablo, the MicroB web browser comes in two different components:

* The UI part of the browser that starts when you click on a bookmark.
* The resident part of the browser, aka browserd that is always running, as long as your tablet is on, and handles most of the actual browsing tasks.

The purpose of the split, according to Nokia engineers, has been to shorten browser startup time. The downside is 5-6MB of lost memory (when not using the browser) and the fact that once some web page makes browserd hang eating 100% CPU cycles, it is very difficult to kill it using stock tablet software.

But the real win is the browser startup time, right? Well, not quite so. I have done some testing and found that it takes ~18 seconds to start MicroB and load an arbitrary page with browserd and ~21 seconds without browserd. This is the stunning difference of 3 seconds or 14.3%!

Some may say that it is not fair to include web page loading time. Specially for these people, I measured time from clicking on a bookmark to the moment the word "Connecting" appears in the browser status line. This resulted in ~15 seconds with browserd and ~18 seconds without browserd. Same 3 second difference or 16.7%.

In other words, browserd appears to be useless in terms of startup time reduction. Unfortunately, Nokia folks are refusing to accept this idea at the moment. Therefore, I suggest that we all take load time measurements, file an official bug, and make Nokia either disable browserd or fix it so that it gives real benefit.

You can help by following instructions below and posting results to this thread. How to test:

1. Use CPU Load applet to verify you have two copies of browserd running. One should take ~2MB, another will take 11-19MB.
2. Start MicroB by clicking on some bookmark and measure time from the click to the moment you see the "Connecting" message.
3. Quit MicroB and use CPU Load applet to kill the bigger copy of browserd.
4. Repeat step #2, measure time, and post both times to this thread.

If you would like to measure the total time (including page loading and rendering), make sure you include the URL of a page you were loading. It may also be good to mention which MicroB extensins you are running.