In case you haven't already tried this, see what happens after you disable extensions and use something like Onyx to clear out the caches, history, etc. which does a better job than Safari's built-in methods, AFAIK. You might get to the root of the issue by loading extensions back one by one and watching what happens.

Cowicide, wow, that really worked miracles. Seems "Do Not Track Plus" was really bogging down the system. Thanks !

Oysterhaven, I'm glad that helped! I know how frustrating it is when a web browser is bogging you down.

I also have problems with the latest update. Safari won't log in to free wifi networks (such as Panera Bread). It keeps going in a loop on the login page. Chrome and Firefox log in fine. Worked fine before this update.

Tim27, I've had problems with logging in with previous Safari versions as well especially when my home start page is Google. Sometimes what works is typing in test.com in the URL field and hitting the enter/return key and it then pulls up the login page. But, yeah, otherwise, if that doesn't work I login with Chrome/Firefox and then close them and run Safari. I'm not sure, but it might be from the adbocking/flashblocking stuff I have running in Safari that causes this issue, but since I've been typing in test.com, I just do that and haven't investigated it further.

5 Star Rating with negative comments? heh.

I have 10 tabs open and Safari is using 236MB. I'm not sure why that's an issue though. I have 8GB of RAM. RAM is cheap these days. Most Macs come with 4GB.

My MacBook Pro also has 8GB of RAM, I just find the amount of RAM used to be a bit too high :)

278MB memory usage for Safari + WebProcess seems relatively low. That's about how much recently restarted Safari is currently using (with ~20 tabs) on my 8GB mini and WebProcess adds another +450MB.

My 4GB MacBook Air is more starved for real memory but virtual memory swapping to the SSD helps offset it.

ram is cheap but my old aluminium penryn macbook pro only allows up to 6g (unnoficial - the official information is 4gb). based on reviews, more than that will start to stall the computer so it's a matter of hardware limitation and not memory price.

also, like in real life, the more money you have, the more money you spend... the more memory you have, the more memory apps will use. when you upgrade your memory you don't get more free ram, you get more apps using that free ram at will.

nevertheless, don't forget safari extensions and plugins also contribute to ram usage. that being said and considering that the goal of a browser which uses separate processes/threads for content is to keep the browser itself safe in a crashing situation and also to be able to recover memory from closed content, it bothers me more that safari doesn't do this recovering and not so much that it uses the memory necessary for it to function properly (even if it's too much for normal standards).

and definitely, it bothers me much more that the webprocess hogs the cpu up to a hundred and something on long scrolling pages, for example. no flash, no images, just text and the cpu is skyrocket.

i've been enjoying safari, anyway, since i stopped using opera.

These later versions of Safari also give the user less information about the cookies that are on their machine too. This part of Safari is not an improvement since it is a dumbing-down of the application. Now I should use an extension to manage these better.