I know it wasn't Firefox using all 1.9GB. But it would not surprise me to see it using more than that - because I already have seen it on my own systems.

Have they fixed all the memory leaks they've been after for the past 5 years? I didn't think so because I keep seeing memory leak issues in their release notes.

Firefox has a single draw for most people from what I've seen over the years. Add-ons. Because the browser itself has really always been "meh." The only reason to use it now is really only to stop Google from gaining any more share. Which isn't a bad thing. And it's always been far better in Windows than it has been for Mac OS.

At least if it's a Windows experience that Matt's mom likes, Firefox should be pretty similar on the Mac, since it's not much anything like a Mac app.

Lion is also pretty slow (not to mention buggy) on hardware that didn't come with it pre-installed, but I always hoped it would be much better on systems that shipped with it. I would not have expected a modest system like that to need more than 2GB.