Firefox 3.6 has just come out and it’s great. There’s only one problem. Google has released the new version of Chrome, version 4, and it’s even better.
This new version retains its speed lead over other browsers. I tested it on one of my Dell 530S desktop PCs. This PC is powered by a 2.2GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800MHz front-side bus. It has 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chipset and was running Windows XP SP3. On this machine, Chrome ripped by Firefox 3.6 on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark test with a mark of 530.8 milliseconds compared to Firefox 3.6’s 1007.0 milliseconds.
While faster than Firefox, Chrome 4 isn’t a great deal faster than Chrome 3.x. On the same machine, my older copy of Chrome came in with a time of 553.0 milliseconds. I was unable to test this production version of Chrome on Linux or a Mac because those versions are still in beta.
Speed, though, isn’t the real news in this latest version of Chrome. This time around it’s the addition of features that demands your attention.