I often get calls from people having trouble with "the internet". Most of the time it's because they are having problems with their browser... and most of the time that's Internet Explorer. When I arrive on-site, my first and most important fix is to suggest kicking Internet Explorer to the curb. Many people are unaware of what a “Web browser” is, so lets start there. A web browser is simply a program that allows you to look at webpages, or “browse the web”. Simple enough, right? What a lot of people don’t realize is there are other options besides Internet Explorer to do this with… and frankly most of them are better. There are 5 major web browsers available. All of them are free. Chrome, Internet Exploder (ops!), FireFox (not FoxFire as so many people call it), Safari and the lesser known Opera. Many people know the only alternative as Firefox, which is still a good browser… but Chrome has it’s number when it comes to speed. Google Chrome is the newest browser to the arena, and its main focus is on speed. It opens quickly, it loads pages in a snap and it’ll even grab you a cappuccino if you’d like. Quite frankly, it mops the floor with Internet Explorer. An independent study compared all of the major web browsers a while back and provided the easiest to understand graph. Now this is from a couple years ago, but it’s my opinion that the information is still fairly accurate. We can get into very complicated details about different java engines and computer-fairies but let’s keep this simple.

Click Image for Full Screen View of Chart Source: Six Revisions

As you can see, Chrome spanks just about everyone else in nearly all tests. This is preformed using the same internet, same computer… just different browsers. I would estimate about 90% of my customers that I’ve encourage switching to Chrome report back happy results… even on occasion sending me “Thank You” gifts such as movie tickets! (ok, not really, but one can dream right?). So if you don’t have this bad boy loaded, give it a try. It will *NOT* remove your internet explorer. It’s perfectly fine to have two, three or 20 browsers loaded onto one computer and they generally won’t fight with each other. You can get it at www.google.com/chrome You can import all of your bookmarks (aka favorites) and do pretty much everything (and more) with Chrome. There is a VERY rare chance that a page you are trying to visit may not work with Chrome. If you encounter this, simple fire up that old clunker (internet explorer) and view that one odd-ball page that way... but it's pretty rare. Please understand this caution: It is a different browser so expect to have things moved around or operate differently. The reason you are (or should) be trying this browser is for a change… so expect things to.. well be different! – In the end if you don’t like it, simply go back to using internet explorer. I think however most readers will fall into that “90%” rate and I’ll be expecting lots of goodies in the mail!