Fastest browser in town?

Most of us who spend quite a bit of time in front of the screen, would have a favourite browser. If you have not bothered to do anything to your PC, and started browsing out of the box, then chances are you're using MS Internet Explorer.

There are plenty of people (I'm one of them, heh) who throw scorn on MS IE -- and for good reason! It's clunky, lethargic.. and I think the fact that it was forced on Windows users probably made it public browser enemy no 1.

The guys using Macs have it made. Their Safari browser is, like many things Apple, super cool... and guess what, in many cases, they are super fast as well!

I used to use Opera... and quite liked it. I forget why I dropped it... probably because I didn't install it when I had my notebook replaced!

In recent years, have been using Mozilla's Firefox... and have been a happy customer. Their tab browsing came aeons before IE. And especially with V3 today, is even better.
Plus it has the bonus of being support by a wonder slew of free add-ons. My favourites are:

• PicLens (now called Color Iris -- you ain't seen the web until you've seen it through PicLens!) and of course

• Scribefire the indispensable blogging tool

A month back, Google got into the thick of the action by introducing Chrome. I've been meaning to give it a test drive -- you know, to see what all that hype was all about. I probably will have to find some time to do that -- one day!

So the question will inevitably come up -- which of these browsers are the best? Every one of the browsers will tell you they are best. And if you look close enough, they are probably focusing on one specific of performance. Like ability to render HTML, or speed to process Java Script, or uses the least memory.....

Is there a clear winner?

Kevin Purdy of LifeHacker.com posted this excellent compilation of browser performance. In that post, you'll see for yourself, which browsers are best at which category. One thing you'll notice, is that IE's (both 7 and 8) performances are the most consistent. Consistently worst or among the worst, that is!!

Check out his site and you'll decide for yourself, which is best. As for me, I think I'm quite happy to stay with Firefox for now.