Flash Runs HOT
Francis Turner
June 22nd, 2007
It first occurred to me while I was reading stories at the Inquirer that some of the time when I was reading the story the fan on my laptop switched on. Odd, I thought, but not much more. Then I noticed the same thing happening on other sites. Not all, and even on sites where it happens not every page. Odd, I thought, but not much more. Finally the light went on. Pages with some sorts of Adobe Flash adverts are the culprits. When you visit a page with the right (wrong?) sort of flash, CPU usage goes up enormously even though you are doing nothing more strenuous that occasionally pressing the down arrow. In the extended entry you can see my CPU jump from an average of under 10% to about 60% at a particular moment. You’ll have to trust me on this but that moment is when the page with the flash ad rendered itself the first time.
I can understand a peak when the page loads. What I don’t have any sympathy for is seeing it remain high. There seems to be no reason for it other than (I guess) sloppy programming somewhere. I should note it isn’t all flash pages, or even all flash ads, but it seems to be consistent with ads from particular vendors. Lenovo is one, but it is certainly not the only one.
The moral of this story? If there is one it is perhaps that flash causes global warming …
