Never satisfied with something that is already working (Firefox), a few months ago I decided to check out Chromium, the open source version of Google’s Chrome web browser. My impression is that it is very snappy at page loads. In looking into which browser would be better on an old, hardware-challenged computer (a Sony VAIO with a 1.2 GHz Pentium M and 512 MB RAM), I found that Tom’s Hardware reports that while Chrome has a heavier memory footprint, it also has faster page loads. On low-end systems that makes it kind of a toss-up—will the increased memory demands translate into a faster feel in your browsing?—but on my 6 GB RAM Dell desktop and my 8 GB RAM Lenovo laptop, the OS can easily afford to throw a couple of GB to Chromium in exchange for a faster browsing experience. Continue Reading »

About 2½ years ago I made the switch to Linux. I figured getting a new home computer was as good a time as any. While I was already going off the beaten path with Linux, I decided to not go too far off by choosing Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution. I kept Windows Vista (pre-installed) on its own partition, just in case I changed my mind.

While I was able (and more than willing) to tinker in order to get things to do what I wanted, my wife, who like me would be using the computer for both personal and professional purposes, needed things to “just work”. Any technical problems she had were going to get kicked to me. I asked her to give it a couple of weeks, but her verdict after one day was “This isn’t any different from Windows.”

I think most end-users would, like my wife, find no real difference for email, web browsing, word processing, and spreadsheets. Continue Reading »