Although Internet Explorer is installed on all Windows machines by default, I have to say I never ever use it; to me it is bloated and very slow.

To combat this, a few years ago I started using Firefox (at the time Version 1, or possibly even 0.8b) as it was so much faster and cleaner to use. I never thought that I would move away from it but it looks like I've found a worthy competitor.

For the past week I've been using Google Chrome (itself only in Beta currently), and the truth is I am absolutely loving it. It is way faster than Firefox 3, which is WAY faster than Internet Explorer itself. It is so nice to click on a browser, have it open almost instantly and then type in an address and have it load immediately.

There are some really nice functions in Chrome, such as in-line searching, having a thumbnail homepage for favourites, desktop shortcuts for web-applications, and incognito mode. Currently there aren't add-on downloads for it (as per Firefox), but I have to admit I found they were slowing that browser down and had started to remove them all. There are some things which I am returning to Firefox to do at the moment, but I feel that I'll be a Chrome user 100% of the time very soon.

You should give it a go and let me know what you think.