Let's get this out of the way: Yes, this issue primarily involves IE. No, I don't have the option to use another browser. Like many, many FT users, I often visit on my work laptop, which is completely locked down to prevent installing any new software. So let's not brush this off as "use another browser" - a considerable percentage of your users don't have that option.

Some part of the FT forum seems to have some very inefficient code in it, or something. It's pretty common for me to open FT, open 2-3 threads in different tabs, and hear my computer start to whine - the CPU fan kicks in, because each tab is pegging one of the processor's cores. And it's not like the computers I'm using are underpowered - I'm typing this from a desktop with an i7 with 8 logical cores, 16 GB of RAM, an SSD, etc. And most of the time, each open tab will max out one of those cores, and show 13% CPU usage in task manager.

This is annoying on a powerful desktop, but can be dealt with. On my laptop, however, opening FT means my battery life projection drops from ~9 hours to about 1:40. It just destroys the CPU. Sometimes it causes the entire browser to hang.

Like I said, I know IE isn't the preferred browser of developers (I do a little development, so I understand why). But I also know that many people who use this site have no choice but to use it. Is there anything that can be done, any setting that can be changed, to make it not such a massive resource hog?

I should note that while it's not as bad, the same issue does occur in FF. Right now I've got 4 FT tabs open in FF, and it's consistently pulling 7% CPU. Other websites (including other forums) pull 0%, as you'd expect. So it's worse in IE, but it's certainly not limited to it. There's something going on in the background, eating CPU cycles for breakfast.

Tested using IE 11, IE 10, & FF 45, all on Win 7.