I hate Internet Explorer. I have to use it at work, and I don't think more than two days go by without my curing it for its clunkiness and ugliness. So I've been using FireFox for several years now and all was well until about a year ago. Starting with the update that added sync, FireFox started being a bit glitchy. I liked sync, but hated the pop-up alert when sync wasn't working since the alert doesn't go away on its own and also cannot be turned off. Then last week my FireFox updated to version 8.something and FireFox stopped working. Okay my computer is old and apparently FireFox doesn't always play nice with Avast free antivirus (which has also been a bit glitchy lately), but that should not cause browser failure. Pages wouldn't finish loading, and then FireFox would completely freeze up. After two hours of trying to find a solution on Mozilla's website (using the dreaded IE), switching to AVG free antivirus, and uninstalling and reinstalling FireFox twice I was quite frustrated. I'd managed to get my bookmarks loaded into IE (current and a bunch that were probably years old ) and almost walked away from the mess, but then I figured I was already frustrated and should just go ahead with installing Google Chrome.
Their website required a bit more clicking than I would have liked to see the features, but I clicked install. Within a few minutes, Chrome was installed, my FireFox bookmarks were loaded, and everything was running great. I was shocked at the speed and ease of use. It syncs to your Google account, and when I downloaded Chrome to my laptop a few days later my bookmarks synced within seconds (when setting up a second computer, don't import bookmarks and sync--I ended up having to delete duplicates though that was no big deal). Instead of separate search and address boxes, there's an omnibox. Type in a word and you can opt t o search or click on a direct link. Add-ons are easy. Opening a new tap shows a pane with your most visited site and a link to the Chrome store where add-ons are obtained. The option folder opens in a full tab instead of a little pop-up, and only things the normal person uses are there. You can set up as many tabs as you want to appear on start-up. Your home page is a single page of your choice.
Things I don't like. The Ad Block Plus extension does not block as many ads as a similar program I used in FireFox. The worst thing is that you can only print full pages. I was paying bills and ended up having to cut and paste the pertinent information I wanted to print into Word (I'm cheap and hate printing more than I have to). Like FireFox, it tends to be slow with loading when my computer's trying to do other stuff (like stupid morning updates), but if one tab freezes, you can often go into another tab that works fine. I've gotten a few warnings that a plug-in isn't working but if I leave it running it usually starts working in a few seconds.
Overall, I'm extremely impressed with Chrome so far. It looks great and is extremely easy t o set-up and use. I highly recommend giving it a try.
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