Not really, and here's why: CNN loads something like 10 megabytes of resources when you open the front page. That's just code and images; all that code has to

Not really, and here's why: CNN loads something like 10 megabytes of resources when you open the front page. That's just code and images; all that code has to be parsed, JITed, built into the DOM, etc. and all of that requires exponential-ish (not scientific, but it feels right) more memory than the code itself. All those images have to be unzipped into pixel buffers and painted on screen. Even assuming your browser could do all of these things right every time, look at how many goddamn standards the browser has to support; many of those features have to be loaded hot and ready to go to improve apparent performance, and those features require a nonzero memory overhead as well. So, in the end, in order for your browser to do anything useful it has to snort memory like a coke addict.