Google Chrome.
If you don’t have it yet, go here for the free download. It’s a web browser. A fast one. Now available for Mac too!
Details, for those who are into this sort of thing…
My Comments: It’s way faster than Safari. Chrome imported my extensive bookmarks seamlessly – unlike Firefox or any other browser! Firefox is still my default browser… I like to root for the little guy – and also I’m just used to the Firefox work flow.
SmallDog’s comments: Chrome is unique in that each tab runs as its own process. If you’ve ever had Safari quit unexpectedly because one of your windows or tabs encountered a situation it couldn’t handle, you’ll appreciate this feature of Chrome. If one tab encounters a situation it doesn’t know how to handle, only that tab will quit. The other open tabs will be unaffected. This leap is is similar to the protected memory in Mac OS X vs. the shared memory of the classic OS. Remember the day when one application crashing meant you had to restart the whole computer?
While developer previews were available some time ago, this is the first public beta of Chrome. It is quite fast, and I haven’t been able to make it crash yet. There are plenty of benchmarking articles out there, but I’m not prepared to declare any browser fastest until Chrome is no longer a beta. With Google’s tendency to keep products in perpetual beta, when or if that happens is uncertain.
Mac users: Intel only.