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.

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 Chromes popularity.

Conclusion… unimpressed. But I look forward to future releases.

Ok, I’ll admit it - I don’t have many “commercial” programs on my PC. Not because I’m a software thief, but simply because there are so many good freeware equivalents available. Therefore this bunch is a bit eclectic. So, in alphabetic order…

ABBYY FineReader

A “lite” version of this came with my scanner and even this is excellent at reading and interpreting text into an electronic format. I often transfer old show programmes onto the BMTG site, and being able to scan them in and convert straight into text to paste onto the site is a god-send. Are there any freeware OCR packages?

Acronis TrueImage

A backup program, yes, but also a splendid program for making disk images. And the latest version can be found for a real bargain (often under £18).

ArcSoft Panorama Maker

Unless you have a product that already has easy-to-use panorama facilities built-in, then this comes highly recommended. It will stitch photos together to make panoramas but, most importantly, it’s incredibly easy to use.

Carbonite

You really can’t beat the satisfaction of knowing that any backup you make is safe and secure, no matter what happens. Those CD’s and hard disks you’ve backed all your precious photos onto - where are they stored? What if there’s a house fire? Sobering thought.

Carbonite sits in your system tray and silently backups all your files to a remote location. Space is unlimited.

DigiGuide

A TV guide application that does, well, pretty much anything you can think of (and if it can’t, there’s a raft of plugins available to help you out). And less than £10 a year.

I’ve used it for years and wouldn’t be without it. Use the link above for a 30 day free trial.

Microsoft Money

It hasn’t been updated for years in the UK (come on Microsoft!) but it’s a valuable tool for getting your personal finances under control. If you can find a copy (eBay?), go for it!

Microsoft Office 2007

For some, a controversial choice as this appears to be a bit of a Marmite product. But I love it. It takes a while to get used to - and I’m still annoyed at how hard it is to insert and delete rows and columns in Excel, compared to how I had the older versions of Office - but it’s improved ease of use and increased functionality makes up for this.

And, yes, yes, OpenOffice is free. But it’s not a patch on this.

Paint Shop Pro

Ah, yes, the original and best. It’s not half as expensive as its rivals but I wouldn’t be without it. Personally, I’m still using version 5.

So, yes, it’s a graphics editor. The current versions are so much more too, with expertise in photo editing and the like, and are way up there with Photoshop, but at a fraction of the price.

I tend to use Photoshop for actual image work, whereas I use Photoshop for photos.

Photoshop Elements

I’ve just bought this after reading rave reviews pretty much everywhere. And, without much of a manual, I’ve had to buy myself. When I get through it, I’ll let you know more fully, but it looks pretty damn good (and the panorama facility will probably make me throw away the aforementioned ArcSoft product).

However, as sods law would have it, I’ve just bought version 6 and, wouldn’t you know it, version 7 is now about to be released (there’s a link on to the side where you can pre-order it).

Windows XP

Yes, Windows XP. I wouldn’t want to touch Vista with a barge-pole. And as much a geek as I am, I don’t get on with Linux. XP is stable and easy-to-use.

Now, I might be a touch influenced by the fact that I work for the company, but the new Boots.com website, launched today, is so, so much better.

The previous version was poor in every respect - it rated badly for accessibility, it’s images were of a low quality, it was incredibly slow and just… well… bad. In fact it was so damn shoddy I can’t even find an old, working version at archive.org to show you.

The new one, created by Salmon, is superior in every respect. It even validates really well (with the exception of a rogue ampersand which creates loads of errors) - very rare in the current world of Amazon and even the rather plain Google.

Ahhh, another chance to try out the new Showcase De Lux. This time I was more sensible and went in the evening when the parking is just £1.50!

It was a different screen this time and it was huge (the auditorium rather than the screen). As before - comfy, clean, got picture and sound. Nice.

Ok, the film. Well, I saw the first Hellboy when it originally came out and I’m a proud owner of it on DVD. The follow-up film was straight into it, was just a cursory explanation of who/what he is at the beginning. The story was a bit over-the-place and the bad guy, in the end, was reasonably easily defeated. But that’s all the bad stuff out of the way - this was, however minutes long it was, of high quality action with a bit of comedy thrown in.

Most films have quiet sections where the fidgety would begin to get a little bored, but this had nothing like this - it really was wall-to-wall.

All-in-all, fantastic entertainment and well worth seeing. I’ll be adding to my DVD collection in a few months…

I hang around a forum where often there is a default cry of “Foxit Reader” if anybody asks about free PDF readers, even if it’s just to ask about a technical problems with Adobe Acrobat Reader. “Is it worth upgrading to the new version?” “Just install Foxit Reader - it’s a lot quicker and not so bloated.” So it goes.

So, I thought I’d give them a go. Now, I’ve used Foxit in the past but found its lack of browser integration and the fact that it wouldn’t handle imbedded URL’s a bit of a problem. So I swapped back to Adobe but used a product called “Adobe Reader SpeedUp”. This strips out the often-unused functionality. However, with more recent versions of Adobe being a lot quicker I’ve stopped using it.

My plan was simple - run Adobe, do some tests, uninstall it, install Foxit and do some more tests.

First of all, Adobe Acrobat Reader version 9.

It’s a whopping 33.5 MB download, but an even worse 204 MB once installed (which took about 70 seconds). Running Acrobat on its own consumed 32MB of my system memory. I then launched a 17 MB document - which took under a second to display - and found it was now consuming 63 MB of memory (split across 2 applications for some reason).

The speed was great but the footprint wasn’t. Oh, and it doesn’t place an uninstall application in your startup menu - one of my pet hates.

So, that got uninstalled and I tried Foxit Reader version 2.3.

The download for Foxit is 2.56 to 3.64 MB, depending on the type you want (zip, installer, MSI). Once installed it uses 6.6 MB - obviously a lot better than Adobe. Not only that but it took about 11 seconds to install (that was with the default install option which, unfortunately, adds desktop and quick launch icons). Launching Foxit used 9 MB of system memory and just 15 MB when I launched the same document that I used with Adobe. Oh, and it took about the same time.

There you go - clear cut. It’s quick and has a small footprint. Case closed. Foxit is the winner.

Unfortunately not.

Did you spot the error? I opened a 17 MB document in Foxit and it only used 15 MB of system memory! What I found is that everytime I scrolled up and down the document this memory usage increased dramatically and didn’t appear to stop. After a few goes I’d got the memory usage above that used by Acrobat - that sounds like a bad memory leak to me!

Not only that but Foxit does not integrate with the browser so documents have to be downloaded from the ‘net. It does now work with URL’s though. For me, though, one of Acrobat’s recent additions, which Foxit lacks, is the bigger problem - the page thumbnail view running down the side, allowing to quickly skim through the document pages.

However, it gets worse for Foxit.

When I had Acrobat installed I tried Adobe Reader SpeedUp again but that seemed to make little difference. However, I did try Adobe Reader Lite - a stripped down version of the full product. This is a 16 MB download which installs at 54 MB, and in just 26 seconds. Again, it comes without an uninstaller shortcut. It integrates with the browser, does page thumbnails, works with URL’s, the full works. But now it consumes 36 MB of system memory and 48 MB when my document is loaded (and now only running as one application).

Unfortunately, even Acrobat suffered from the memory leak problems and I managed to easily get memory usage over 100 MB. Why this is I simply don’t know, however the leaps weren’t as dramatic as Foxit.

So, conclusion. Both appear to eat memory (one more dramatically than the other) and both are quick. Foxit lacks features but has a smaller footprint. However, as memory usage doesn’t seem to create a winner, I hardly think it can come down to how much they use on your hard disk - the difference of a few dozen MB is hardly going to be a problem with current disk sizes.

Using the Lite version of Acrobat really cuts it down and would certainly be my own personal recommendation. It’s what I’ve left installed.