Google Chrome 0.29 beta - First Impressions

After 3 days of testing, I feel free to come out with the first impressions of Google Chrome browser, browser imagined to be IE/Firefox/Opera killer.


Google Chrome in its early beta stage (0.29) seems like fairly good browser. It is rather fast (seems equivalent to Firefox, even faster on some pages) with some interesting features. I won't bother with counting all the features, will just mention some facts. First of all, which is in my opinion not a surprise, address bas operates as Google search - you just type a phrase on address bar and Chrome acts as Google web search. Tabbed browsing is an option all browsers now have but interesting to mention is browsing in "incognito" mode, browsing without caching any files on your PC. New tab option shows window with most visited sites (incognito browsed sites not included!) and most recently bookmarked sites.



There are lots of discussions on the Internet about Google Chromes' EULA and possible privacy thefts but IMO, things are a bit overreacted.


New bug-fixed version of Google Chrome, released after 3 days, gives us right to believe that Google really decided to act fast and serious with their browser and that they really do mean to grab serious percentage of browser industry.



Google Chrome is rated 4.5 out of 5 on The First Software Pick

Mozilla Firefox 3 Download Day

Download day organized by Mozilla to enter the Guinness World Records book as most downloaded software has finished yesterday, and it seems to be a successful project but it still needs verification from GWR book officials.

The exact number of downloads is 8,549.973 of copies, or if you like to see it this way: 356000+ copies per hour or almost 6000 copies per minute!
I believe that these figures would be bigger if the servers weren't overloaded in the beginning of the countdown.
More than 3.2 million copies were downloaded from the USA while Germany was second with 820.000 copies.

It is interesting to mention that MS Internet Explorer team again send the cake for Mozilla team, as a gift for their new version release. They have done the same thing when Mozilla released version 2.0.

Openoffice.org

IMHO, Openoffice is the best Microsoft Office alternative, currently at version 2.4.1 and beta release of v.3.0.
OOO (OpenOffice.org) is bundled with software which makes perfect MS Office alternative - word processor, spreadsheet editor, presentation software, graphics editor, database tool, most of which you get by buying MS Office. OOO made its own standard which is free to use and is multiplatform compatible because Openoffice has versions for many OS'es, such as Linux/Unix, Solaris etc...

The only minus I would give to OOO compared to MS Office is that MS gives us better look and feel. Or I am, just like most of us, only used to it?

The best thing is kept for the end - Openoffice.org is completely free and and therefore really worth giving it a shot!

You may find latest Openoffice.org updates on thefirstpick.com / openoffice...

Back to work

Hello everybody!

After more than half a year I just wanted to say HELLO to everyone and announce that the end came to silence on thefirstpick blog!

See you around!

Cheers!