Google Chrome is actually pretty cool

As I blogged about previously, I have voluntarily re-entered the world of Windows so that I can play with Google Chrome. Yesterday while at work, I used Apple's "Back to My Mac" to finish the Windows XP install (so many patches were required), so that when I got home, I was ready to hit the ground running with Chrome.

So far, my overall impression is quite positive. I have used a lot of browsers, and actually switch around often (usually going back and forth between Safari and Firefox, with some Camino thrown in), but I did almost all of my surfing last night in Chrome. If you can get past the fonts, it almost looks like a first-class citizen on my iMac, thanks to VMWare's "Unity" mode:

Google Chrome, on my mac, pointed at Daring Fireball

The performance is quite good, especially considering that on my Machine, Chrome has to go through two different operating systems, and a virtualization engine. I didn't experience any crashes, so I can't speak to how well Chrome isolates tabs from one another. Of course, I haven't installed flash yet, so that could be why there weren't any crashes. ;)

If you're interested in learning more about Chrome, check out Google's comic that they commissioned for the release - it's really quite good, and explains a lot of the rationale behind Chrome.

After the break, I'm going to upload a screen shot of my full desktop, if you're curious.

-Andy.

My current desktop - you can see it full size as either a PNG (<1Mb) or JPEG (~200Kb)