[Gllug] Do modern webpages kill older laptops/PCs?

[M.Blackmore]

2 years ago I purchased a pair of Inspiron 8200 laptops second hand -
768mb ram, 2ghz P4, and a 16mb nvidia card.

Under Ubuntu 6.06 (transmuted into Mint Linux 'cos they put in all the
multimedia stuff) these would happily run Evolution with LOTS of stuff
on an imap server and local files, and Firefox whatever version it was
then, with often up to 20 windows open (I'm a lazy sod who hates
bookmarks).

Now they are unuseable with more than 3 or so web pages open. 

Web pages seem to be so loaded up with flash this and python or perl
that and dancing pictures of adroidal sheep etc. nowadays - is it this
that is killing the laptop? I would have thought 2ghz of processor power
was quite enough for most things "ordinary" non power users need,
thanks, and the ram memory isn't saturated ... so that leaves the 16mb
video card as the bottleneck? Oui or non?

How can all the dancing twirling stuff in "web 3"(??) be affecting the
sheer utter mindbending slowness of navigating around Firefox? Is it the
video card memory? Has Firefox become a slug with version changes?

Which raises for me the question based on my technical ignorance - what
IS it that video card memory does that all the singing and dancing on
webpages can slow down changing to tabbed windows, make highlighting
links agonisingly slow (can take up to 10 seconds to highlight) and so
forth?

I've reinstalled a couple of times from baremetal up (called finger
trouble when playing with setups and so  forth and getting into awful
dependency tangles so I just thought easier to start again and not mess
up next time) and that hasn't made a difference. Not the same passwords
or anything either. New server and firewall - so I don't think I've been
botnetted.

Am I right in my suspicions? I've just had to upgrade my wifes old
computer to a 2.8 P4 with 96mb vid card from an older 1ghz machine with
vid card with 20mb memory and the difference is phenomenal... hers had
also ground to uselessness over the last two years whilst on web
browsing.

Be interesting if someone with technical knowledge could help me
understand what is going on here.

Many thanks
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