by Colin Morley

Created on: December 31, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2009

They say the best things in life are free. That certainly applies to the best software of 2008. Congratulations, Google, on your excellent Chrome browser. It has changed my life for the better and the fact that it has cost me nothing is a wonderful bonus.

Even before the latest scare over the insecurity of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, I had become tired with it crashing every time I opened more than five or six tabs. I didn't want to go back to the older version without tabs, because that used more processing power, and made the open pages difficult to view and compare quickly. My options were limited.

When I read the blurb announcing Google Chrome I decided to download the software and try it out for a period against Internet Explorer. That was at the beginning of October 2008 barely a month after its launch. Since then I have used Internet Explorer precisely twice. My sole reason for using IE is that I have one single program which, for whatever reason, will only run using Internet Explorer.

In every other respect, Google Chrome has rewarded me with a faster browser, a browser which has not yet crashed - even with ten tabs open simultaneously and which doubles wonderfully as a search engine without the need to load Google's homepage, which I now only need to load to research images or video clips.

As an active writer, I cannot recommend Google Chrome highly enough. On a daily basis I need to access many sites in both English and French languages. What used to take me half an hour with Internet Explorer, I can literally accomplish in about half the time. If you count the number of daily crashes I was experiencing, that time saving ratio is probably even greater.
When I bookmark a site to my favourites list it is automatically stored in alphabetical order so much easier to find, especially as my bookmarks are a bit like my mind cluttered with millions of different ideas and threads. If only I could arrange my brain cells in such an orderly fashion I could work even faster.

As I also download various programs and documents both for research and testing, I am delighted to find that Google Chrome retains a history of downloads. This way I can periodically check what I have downloaded and decide what I need to keep and what I can now delete. Those with organised personalities may find this a little strange, but if like me you lose track easily of what you have downloaded, it can come as a shock when your processor starts to heave and grind under the strain of millions of bytes of information which are no longer useful.

Google Chrome even gives you the option of going incognito' and opening a separated window where you can browse to your heart's content without leaving a history trail.

On a scale of one to ten I think I would have to award Google Chrome a full house ten. Even though I have discovered at least one application that won't run in Chrome, the time and trouble it has saved me in such a short time has been a real treat. Microsoft has a very hard task to match the efficiency, ease of use and innovation that Google Chrome has delivered in 2008.

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