I have to say, though, that regardless of whether or not it's quantum it's still damn fast. But the question was, is it quantum? I don't exactly know how you prove that. I assume you can, I just don't know how.
I think the overarching aspect of agile has failed, in part because it requires more implementation than most companies are willing to put up with.
I see, in general (and I am a certified scrummaster, FWIW), that companies tend to embrace sprints - usually going for two weeks - and daily standups (which they might do poorly, but at least they try). Everything else - estimation sessions, lessons learned, burndown charts - are up for grabs. Maybe that's a failure of the company. Maybe that's a failure or Agile, for failing to take into account the normal inertia of companies - I don't konw. It is better than waterfall, but it's not fully embraced.
I disabled everything but Ghostery, since in reality I don't use Firebug much. We'll see what happens with that as the only add-on. Otherwise, I'm jumping ship. I don't mind some inconveniences, but when I can't get anything done...
I'm running a machine with the same specs as you and I don't ever experience Firefox bogging down as you are describing. I do believe Firefox is more heavy-weight than Chrome, but nothing to the point where I have to consider updating my OS or running an SSD. I set my browser to delete everything when I close and launch again. This helps to keep registry and temp files from building up. Perhaps this might help?
I've never been able to get firefox to play well for me from the start (for me 2008). I searched for something faster and I found opera and used that.
As is mentioned earlier, firefox does not appear to take advantage of multi-threading. I take this to mean that it's performance would be the same on a quad core cpu or a single core cpu of the same speed. There's much more to it than I know for sure, but certainly feels like it has to share resources with itself as well as anything else running. I tried it out a couple months ago and then went back to Opera/chrome. Many of the same plugins are available in chrome that are offered for firefox.
If you don't have an SSD, upgrading to one would make a huge performance difference. You can also try Pale Moon and see if that works better for you.
You should certainly also upgrade to Windows 8.1 at least, if not Windows 10. There aren't any compatibility differences that I've ever noticed, and there are absolutely performance benefits.
Oh my God, WinG. That lasted for what - a year? I think I was using it seriously at one point. Part of the ultimate quest for a generic graphics library (suitable for gaming, or whatever).
