I really hate to say it, as I've been a FireFox user for a while now. But Google Chrome is FAST, and I've set it to be my default browser for now. It is still technically beta, so if it fouls up in any substantial way, I'll post and let you know... but it sure looks good today.I wrote a little Windows application for purely personal purposes that takes both a date and location parameter, then shells to the default browser with an Open statement to display a schedule page.
(Basically, instead of going through typing a really massive URL or five levels of mouse click / display page, I get to the immediate result that I want with three clicks. Sometimes it IS handy to be a geek.)
Results: FireFox - 3 seconds. Google Chrome - less than 1 second.
That's the only rigorous test that I've done to this point, but everything seems faster. And there are several other small touches that I really like.
First, the tabs, URL bar, button bar and so forth are minimalist and reasonably intuitive. (See the picture.)
Second, the default home page is kind of cool. It displays all the sites I've been too recently or mostly, and lets me just click them to get back. (See the picture too.)
The pre seeking in the URL is really fast. And Chrome inherited all my FireFox settings perfectly.
Here's another review from CIO magazine. You can download the latest Google Chrome right here.
