Well, it couldn’t get much worse. I came home to….. a broken wireless modem/router. Noooooo.

It was dead. And a new power supply on it didn’t revive it either.

So I bundled it into a bag and took it to a nearby small computer shop. Thankfully they sold a modem with the same type of power supply so tried that on the modem… dead. They tested my power supply… dead. It was plugged into a surge protected socket and everything else is okay, so we can only assume that one of these (the router or the power supply) took the other one out as well.

Not wanting to be without the internet for too long I bought a replacement there and then. I daren’t look at how much cheaper it would have been buying off of the internet. But, hey, it’s quick and hassle free – if it doesn’t work, it’s easy to take back.

Now, the router I DID have was a Netgear DG834GT, which has Super-G, giving better speed and range with compatible receivers. Such a receiver is in my daughters computer. However, Super-G only works if you’re transmitting on a particular channel – I had to change mine recently because of interference from somebody else on the same channel, so I no longer use the Super-G facility. So faced, at the computer shop, with the Super-G and standard version of this router, I plumped for the later.

I now have a Netgear DG834G – version 4, which includes ADSL2 compatibility.

It was set up REALLY easily – my router name and password is set the same but I’ve put a stronger password on the admin panel. All of this meant that everything wireless around the house burst into life without me having to change anything on them.

Naturally, something went wrong. I took the opportunity, as I was just setting it up, to flash the router firmware to the latest level. It was going through as a strip adapter that I was using (shoddy bit of kit) shorted and tripped the power off. Potentially, the router was knackered already. However, it looks like it had gone through by the time the power went off as the firmware level is correct and it’s all working fine.

One thing I did learn from this…. make a note of my ADSL username and password. I hadn’t and it was buried deep in my Gmails. Thankfully I could use my phone to access and search my mail account. But, now, it’s noted.

Well, I have it. You download it directly from the Google site and, well, I’m underwhelmed.

Like a lot of Google products, it’s not flashy at all. Indeed, a browser is hardly very sexy but I think Google has managed to make it even less so. It’s practical but not much else.

But the thing that stands out, or rather doesn’t, is it’s total lack of anything that makes it worth having over, say, Firefox. There’s no plugins, no way of synchronising my bookmarks. In fact, I’ve just moved over to the tagging function in Firefox 3 so all my bookmarks are now in totally disorganised folders and I rely on the tags to find what I want. That functionality isn’t in Chrome but, instead, it ports over my messy folders.

They’ve tried to be different by moving the tabs to the very top of the window and by having a “funky” home page (but nothing different to what Opera and Firefox can do, with the help of a plugin).

The Acid3 test fails – which is odd, as it’s based on Web Kit and Safari has got it to pass. Weird.

Install size wise, Chrome takes up about twice the footprint of Firefox and, for some reason, it doesn’t install in your usual Program Files folder, but a hidden Application Data folder instead.

Running, Chrome has about a 15 MB smaller footprint in memory than Firefox but as the technical guy from Adobe was most adamant about – memory size means very little in these days of virtual, paging memory. Launching Gmail in both increases both by a further 35 MB, so the 15 MB difference remains. Speed wise, well I don’t have proper testing facilities, but they appeared to be very similar, although Chrome does appear to be a lot quicker at launching.

Java doesn’t appear to work with Chrome but Flash and Shockwave test fine. I hit it a bit harder with high quality, full screen iPlayer, but it didn’t bat an eyelash. However, I noticed some weird corrupting of the text in the top left hand corner of the BBC page – something I couldn’t recreate even in Safari.

One nice addition is the ability to create “an application” out of a webpage – essential this is a shortcut to Chrome where the site will run without the usual toolbars, etc – I assume this is for running the various online Google apps. Nice, but as I’ve demonstrated within this blog, it can be done easily with IE and, I’m sure, Firefox as well.

Summary of Google Chrome

Java not working is a bit of an issue but surely the lack of any kind of plugin functionality is really going to impact on Chrome’s popularity. Conclusion… unimpressed. But I look forward to future releases.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 2nd September 2008.

They’ve finally done it – Google have announced their own browser. Google Chrome (odd name).

What? You’ve not realised? I don’t think I’ve seen such a software release (beta too) plastered over the media (top of the BBC’s technology news!).

I was expecting it to be Gecko based, like Firefox, as Google and Firefox have been working very closely recently. But it’s not – it uses Web Kit, like Safari. Having said that, Web Kit does pass the mighty Acid3 test.

Anyway, it’s released tonight and, like the true geek I am, I’ll try and get hold of it. Will their servers take the strain any better than those when Firefox 3 was released?

In the meantime, you can keep yourself entertained with some screenshots. And if you’re REALLY bored, you can read its own comic book.