Google Chrome - a review

This is my take on Google Chrome. Mind you, I'm a long time firefox user (and occasional opera user). I'm not even going to pretend to be objective here :-)

The Good:

1. Speed. Javascript heavy sites seem to be blazingly fast as compared to Firefox
2. Tabs. I really liked the fact that you can very quickly split a tab into a separate window and vice-versa. I have a dual monitor setup and this is a killer feature!
3. Automatically set up my office proxy without even my asking. Looks like it is using IE's settings directly without any proxy on its own (Unlike FF or Opera)
4. Doesn't crash on Eva's laptop which runs Vista Home. This is one problem with FF3.0 but Opera sails here as well.
   

The Bad:

1. No gestures. I keep trying to use mouse gestures and get frustrated with the lack of them. Once you start using gestures there is no going back.In general, the lack of configurability or more specifically lack of extensions. No Scribefire to publish to this blog, no forecastfox and most importantly for me, no single click mechanism to change proxies. The Proxy item is pretty important for anyone who has to use a office laptop from home. Mind you, this is absent in opera as well but Gestures works out of the box.
   
2. No rss based bookmarks. I keep a lot of bookmarks as delicious tags and organize them as folders on my FF setup. Even though Chrome imported my FF bookmarks, it just couldn't import these
3. Auto Dial. Don't quite like the feature, because I want to be able to open blank tab. I definitely don't want anyone to see my browsing history.

Overall, its a good beta but a lot more can be done. With FF 3.1 moving to Tracemonkey, I expect javascript heavy sites to be as fast on FF as well.

In other news, IE 8 is out, but who cares?