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A software update was released by Apple for the current Mac OS X line up yesterday. The update, which is meant for all users running the Snow Leopard (10.6.*) platform only, comes with a handful of patches, bug-fixes and solution for a few compatibility issues.

Users are suggested to back up their system, with Time Machine, as a usual word of caution. The update can be applied with the Software Updater over the Internet or the whole package can be downloaded and applied locally. The download size may vary depending on the system and the patches already applied before.

Here we have a few notable fixes, it comes with -

• improve printing reliability
• reliability of photo screen savers.
• address a color issue in iMovie with HD content
• improve sleep and wake reliability when using Bonjour wake on demand
• resolve issues with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
• improved reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X
• improve the reliability of 3rd party USB input devices
• compatibility with OpenGL-based applications
• background message colors to display correctly in Mail
• resolve an issue that prevented files from copying to Windows file servers
• improve performance of Logic Pro 9 and Main Stage 2 when running in 64-bit mode
• fix glowing, stuck, or dark pixels when viewing video from the iMac (Late 2009) built-in iSight camera

Apart from these, several other Airport (WiFi), MobileMe and Time Machine fixes have been introduced in this update.

Snow Leopard 10.6.2 users can update their system with this package [720MB]. To migrate directly from 10.6 or 10.6.1 to 10.6.3, this Combo Update [784MB] has to be applied on the system.

Oregon Scientific is famours for unleashing a handful of new technologically distinct gadgets every year. True to their fame, a pair of new products have been released this year from their production stable. Although there is no scope to expect a completely new technological marvel, these products seem to catch the attention of the tech savvy, who have elusive and distinct tastes for tech-gadgets.

Up first on the list, is the new ECO Solar Projection Clock that is equipped with a detachable solar panel and an integrated projector which beams the time image to be displayed onto a close-by wall. Second on the gadget geek's hit-list, is the neat and compactly designed Helios Weather Station that is armed with a built-in solar panel. The solar panel specializes in forecasting the weather conditions for the next 12 hours within the user's local area. It also has the ability to display indoor/outdoor temperatures and humidity for up to 3 locations around the user's present location. It is said that the solar projection clock will be available at an undisclosed price from April 2010. But, the Helios Weather Station is up for grabs now, at just $54.99, which roughly translates to Rs. 2,477.

Google's initiative to provide experimental 1Gbps fiber optics broadband network service to a target user group of 50,000 to 500,000 people, has attracted massive response in terms of individual user applications and community membership applications in a single day (numbers actually doubling up in a time span between 10AM – 5PM) reaching gigantic figures of 194,000 user applications and 1,100 community responses. As a result, Google's iconic “pro-net-neutrality” status has gained momentum and once again sparked the fire that surrounded the rumours of 'GoogleNet' way back in 2005.

In spite of all the paperwork Google has to filter through (as a direct consequence of this massive support from its user and community fan-base), Google appears optimistic about picking a couple of locations to begin this most anticipated project by the end of the year. Meanwhile, we could dream that the massive Google fan-base keeps this community alive by uploading interesting and intriguing videos to boot our ever-hungry entertainment needs.

In a Recent Hack developed By russian Hackers loaded HTC HD 2 with WP7!..

HTC CEO, Peter Chou, announced on Friday that HTC will be releasing a Windows Phone 7 Series device late this year. The device might be a HTC Obsession, if some old rumours are anything to go by. The announcement of producing a WP7S phone is considered unusual, as HTC’s earlier position was that it would not produce a Windows Phone until Microsoft removed certain restrictions for manufactures and developers, including the freedom to customize the OS/interface.

we are probably going to see an HTC phone running the Windows Phone 7 Series OS before HTC’s official release of its device, as Russian hackers have managed to put the WP7S OS on the HTC HD2, which is one of HTC’s flagship devices. Check out the pictures of the phone running the WP7S OS

While the HTC HD2 is quite up-to-date on the hardware front, it does not meet Microsoft’s minimum specifications for the WP7S OS, yet somehow, the Russians have managed to make it work. They claim that everything seems to be working barring some device lag, including WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS etc, except the graphics driver, which is still delivering jittery output. The Russian team is planning to release a beta version of the HD2 Windows Phone 7 Series ROM for the public soon.

If you search for “best freeware programs” or “top freeware apps”, you’ll get lots of lists, but mostly with programs everyone has already heard of: AVG anti-virus, 7-zip, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc, etc.

That’s all nice and fine, but what about all those little gems programs that work great, but don’t get all the headlines? In this article, I will try my best to mention as many small name freeware programs as I can that can help make you more productive!

These are written in no particular order! Again, I’m sure there are hundreds of programs that I won’t mention, so if you feel I’ve really missed a great program, mention the name of the app and what it does in the comments!

If you like this post and think it would be useful to others, feel free to share it!

1. We’ve all heard of 7-zip, WinRAR, and WinZip, but what about other great zipping programs like PeaZip, TugZip, and Jzip?

2. What’s the best Notepad replacement out there? Notepad++ right? We all know that! Ever heard of XML Notepad? It’s a free XML editor and works great! Or what about PSPad? It’s a very nice code and text editor also.

3. If you use Windows, then you know and love the Windows registry! CCleaner may be the most popular system maintenance tool out there, but what about other registry cleaners and tuners, such as Comodo registry cleaner and Eusing registry cleaner?

4. Ever accidentally delete a file that you really needed? You can try a program called Pandora Recovery to recover lost or deleted files or Recuva, a useful file recovery app. But that’s not all! Ever heard of Recover My Files?

5. Speaking of file recovery, ever accidentally delete all the pictures off your memory stick!? It happens more often than you would think. In that case, you can use Art PLus Digital Photo Recovery to get back deleted photos.

6. Ever forget your Outlook password? Or your email password for Eudora, Thunderbird, or some other email program? If so, you can use a cool program called Mail PassView to reveal passwords and account details for many email clients. You can also use PSTPassword to recover a lost PST password.

7. What if you need to get the password for your or someone else’s Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger IM client? If you’re looking for a cool instant messenger password recovery tool, check out MessenPass.

8. Since we’re talking about passwords, ever run into the case where you forget a password, but it’s still saved in your application, but it’s hidden? If you even run into that situation, use Asterisk Logger to reveal any password that uses asterisks.

9. Continuing on with passwords, did you know you could password protect EXE files? Yes it’s possible with a program called Empathy! Pretty neat eh?

10. What about password protected Excel files? I’ve definitely run into those and you can use a program called Excel Password Remover to get rid of any password-protected Excel workbook or sheet.

11. With all this password talk, ever thought about using a free password manager? Ever heard of Secure Data Organizer? What about Billeo Password Manager? Or Password Safe? Or KeePass?

12. Enough about passwords, let’s talk media players! We’ve all heard of VLC media player and Windows Media Player, but what about KM Player and GOM player, both are great media players for Windows. What about ALSong?

13. Those media players will take care of just about every codec out there, but if not, you can always use a program called CodecInstaller to help you determine which audio and video codecs are needed to play a video.

14. If you take a lot of home videos, you probably need to edit and stitch them together right? Don’t worry about Adobe Premiere, you can use other free programs like Windows Live Movie Maker, a product from Microsoft. If not that, you can also check out VideoSpin and BrushVideo, two great video editing programs for Windows.

15. Speaking of videos, there are many times when you need to convert from one format to another. You can use Pazera Free Video to convert videos to FLV or SWF format. Or you can convert DVDs to iPod format using Movie2X DVD Ripper or HandBrake.

16. But that’s not all! You can convert movies to MP4 format using ImTOO DVD Ripper or convert Powerpoint presentations to DVD video, flash, or PDF using free tools like authorPoint and CutePDF Writer.

17. Work with PDF files a lot? Ever heard of NovaPDF Pro? It’s a free program for creating encrypted PDF files. Or what about PDF-XChange Viewer? It has a bunch of features and is actually better than Foxit!

18. If you want to create PDFs fast, there are a bunch of programs like CutePDF, PrimoPDF, Bullzip, doPDF, and lots more! Check out this post on seven free PDF writers that you might be interested in. One more is PDFCreator.

19. Switching topics, I’m sure you back up your computer regularly right? If not, you should check out Easeus Todo Backup, a free program that lets you backup and clone your hard drives. Another program is Hinx Backup Easy. Ever heard of AceBackup?

20. If you just want to backup your data and not image your entire hard drive, you can use Karen’s Replicator to backup files and folders to network drives or external drives on a schedule.

21. Whether you know it or not, you probably have a bunch of duplicate files on your computer! It just happens. You can use Duplicate Cleaner to find and remove those duplicate files. You can also use other programs like Easy Duplicate Finder and Duplicate File Finder!

22. If you want to save more hard drive space, you should look into a program that will analyze hard disk space usage, like TreeSize or Space Sniffer. Other programs include FosiX Lite and WinDirStat.

23. Tweaking Windows can get you a decent performance boost if you know what you’re doing. Some programs that make it easy are TweakUI, MZ Vista Force, and Tune-Up Utilities. You can also check out a program called Handy Tweakers.

24. Been looking for a good free photo editor lately? Check out Photoscape, Irfanview, Paint.NET, or Phantasmagoria! If you prefer an online photo editor, checkout PicResize and Picnik.

25. Speaking of photos, you can create some cool photo albums using free software. Check out Jalbum and Vicman, both free tools to create web photo albums. Other programs include Photo! 3D Album and Thumb Studio.

26. If you’ve got a ton of pictures and videos like me, you might want to store your data online. MediaFire is a free online file storage service and so is Drop.io, Windows Live SkyDrive and Dropbox. You can even use Gmail for file storage!

27. Ever had to send a large file to someone, but your email client wouldn’t allow more than 10 to 20 MBs? You can share large files with friends and family using a program called Gbridge. Other programs include Docstoc OneClick, HTTP File Server and Fileai.

28. One really awesome notes application is Evernote. It’s free (there is a paid version too) and syncs with your mobile phone and the web. Never forget anything again.

29. If you have an FTP server or a website, you will probably need a good FTP client program like WinSCP, which supports secure FTP also. Another good program is FileZilla.

30. If you’re paranoid about your data, you might want to encrypt your computer hard drive with a program like AxCrypt or TrueCrypt.

31. If you want to be even more careful, you can actually create secured and locked text files using a program called LockNote.

32. If you want to hide specific folders in Windows, you can use a program called Free Hide Folder, which makes it completely invisible.

33. And if you want to hide just a few files, did you know you can hide files inside pictures using a free zipping program?

34. If you constantly use the same programs over and over, it might be a good idea to download a quick program launcher. You’ve all heard of Launchy, but what about RocketDock, FreeLaunchBar, JetStart, and Executor?

35. One of my favorite file and application launchers, however, is Find and Run Robot, aka FARR. Weird name, but awesome launcher.

36. Ever wanted to automate a certain task in Windows? Maybe you want to have your computer turn off every day at 10pm? Or certain keystrokes you want to record and repeat over and over again? Whatever the case, AutoHotKey is an awesome program for automating many tasks in Windows.

37. I personally don’t mind the Start Menu in Windows, but Vista Start Menu is a program that adds a crapload of features to your Start Menu like the ability to use tabs, resize the menu, and much more.

38. Ever needed to sync one folder with another folder on the same computer? If you need to keep two folders in sync, check out SyncToy.

39. If you need to sync data between two different computers, then you might want to check out a free program called Allway Sync.

40. While on the topic of syncing, sometimes it’s really useful to sync your bookmarks between computers also. You can check out a program called Zinkmo to sync bookmarks between different browsers and across multiple machines.

41. If you have a lot of bookmarks, you might be able to manage them much better by using Tidy Favorites. It’s one of the best bookmark managers out there and it syncs, backups, and helps you search through bookmarks!

42. If you have a lot of music, you might want to consider a music management program like Media Jukebox. Another good program is aTunes.

43. If you’re worried your computer might crash and you’ll lose all your music, you can back it up to an online MP3 file storage service like MP3Tunes. What’s cool about this rather than just backing up music files onto a USB hard drive is that you can access your media files from anywhere via streaming.

44. If you’ve recently bought a new computer, you can use a program called PC Decrapifier to get rid of all those useless programs that can come bundled with the PC and slow everything down.

45. After you have a computer for a while, there are always going to be programs that you don’t use anymore and that can be uninstalled. Revo Uninstaller will get rid of any program whether it likes it or not.

46. Even if you use Google for searching the Internet, there are many times when a site listed in the top 10 results is spammy or contains malware. However, I always like using extra tool such as WOT (Web of Trust) or McAfee SiteAdvisior to protect myself when browsing the Internet.

47. If you have sensitive data on your computer that you want to permanently delete from your hard drive, I would suggest using a program called Eraser.

48. Now if you’ve deleted something and need to get it back, then you need to check out a program like Undelete Plus, which helps you recover accidentally deleted files. (in addition to #4)

49. What’s one thing in Windows that everyone does all the time? Open and save files. FlashFolder is a really cool app that adds a small toolbar to your Open and Save dialogs so that you can quickly access favorite destinations on your hard drive.

50. The other most used feature in Windows is probably Windows Explorer. Direct Folders is a another program that enhances Windows Explorer by adding quick links to favorite folders and also a list of recently open folders.

51. If you’re looking for a straight-up Windows Explorer replacement, check out Q-Dir, which adds some useful features to the basic built-in Windows Explorer.

52. Vista Breadcrumbs is a cool app that gives you the Windows Vista style breadcrumbs look in Windows XP.

53. Do you have a lot of programs that load when Windows starts? Does it take several minutes for your computer to become useable? If so, check out Startup Delayer, a program that delays the startup of programs so that your computer loads faster.

54. In #27, we talked about how to share files by creating your own file server, but you can also use a cool program called Gbridge to share files between two computers easily.

55. In #39, I mentioned using Allway Sync to keep files on two computer in sync, but you can also use a program called FolderShare from Microsoft.

56. You’ve all probably heard of CrossLoop for remotely sharing your desktop, but you can also use Mikogo or Remobo.

57. Everyone knows that FastStone can be used to capture screenshots of your desktop, but you can also check out Screenshot Captor, Screen Hunter, PicPick, and uTipu.

58. If you think you might have bad memory installed in your computer, you can check for bad memory using memtest86.

59. Ever wish you could rearrange the list of open programs on your taskbar? Using Taskbar Shuffle you can drap and drop buttons on the taskbar to any position.

60. Speaking of the taskbar, you can use a program called TrayIt to minimize any application to the system tray instead of the taskbar, thereby freeing up space.

61. And if you want to spruce up your Windows XP taskbar, you can install Visual Task Tips, which gives you the thumbnail previews for running programs in the taskbar like in Vista.

62. If you’re like me, you probably have an IM account on GTalk, Yahoo, AOL and ICQ. If so, you can use Digsby to chat with all your buddies from all networks in one window!

63. One of the worst things that can happen to your computer is for it to become infected with Spyware. HijackThis is an awesome program that you can use to find and remove spyware, especially really nasty spyware.

64. Everyone has heard of Spybot for removing spyware, but another really good program is SUPERAntiSpyware.

65. In #14, I talked about free video editing programs, but you may also need to use a program like VirtualDub to convert a video to another format or to resize it, etc.

66. If you are one of those people that love to arrange icons all over their desktop in pretty patterns, you may want to use Icon Restore to save your desktop layout.

67. If you ever need a free CD/DVD burner program, check out CDBurnerXP. It also has a portable version you can run off your USB stick.

68. If you ever need to burn an ISO image to a CD or DVD, then you should use a free program like ImgBurn.

69. Burning ISO images is cool, but what if you want to create your own ISO image too? You can use Folder2ISO or LC ISO Creator to create an ISO image from a folder in Windows or from a CD or DVD.

70. Ever run into the problem where you are trying to delete a file in Windows and it says that the file is in use and cannot be deleted? You can use Unlocker to delete any file that is locked by a process.

71. Though you might not have to do this often, there are times when you need to change the file extension of many files at once. You can use Extension Renamer to batch change file extensions easily.

72. Speaking of batching, you can also use a program called ReNamer to batch rename thousands of files at once. Useful for digital photos that all start with the same nonsense text like DSC00203, etc.

73. But let’s not stop there. What if you have thousands of images and you want to perform some kind of change on all of them like resizing or adding a watermark or rotating? Use can use MODI to batch modify images. Cool!

74. In #19 and #20, I talked about software to backup your computer, but forgot to mention DriveImage XML, an awesome program you can use to create an image of your hard drive.

75. Windows Live Writer is a free program from Microsoft that you can use to write blog posts in a Word type of editor. It also has plugins that enhance the functionality.

76. Ever head of Blender? It’s a pretty amazing program and it’s free. It lets you create 3D worlds, 3D animations and 3D games. Check it out.

77. Format Factory is one my favorite programs out there because it’s a universal transcoder that can convert between many videos, audio and graphic formats.

78. Looking for a really good partition manager? Check out Gparted, probably the best not-heard-of partition manager out there.

79. With Windows, you normally have to keep your drivers up to date otherwise the OS can crash or blue screen. Use RadarSync to automatically find the most recent drivers for your system.

80. If you need to reformat your computer, you can use a program called DriverMax to automatically backup all your drivers and then restore them after the install.

81. Looking for a file on your computer? Default Windows search sucks? Well, why don’t you try out Index your Files or Everything, two really awesome Windows file search tools.

82. Wish your clipboard could store more than one item at a time? Well you should check out ClipX and Ditto clipboard extension, two cool clipboard manager programs.

83. Most people who work in offices uses Microsoft Outlook for their main email. If you do, you have to check out Xobni, an awesome program for organizing and searching your Outlook email.

84. Speaking of Outlook, ever heard of AttachmentOptions? It’s sweet. It basically lets you configure the list of “blocked” or “unsafe” attachments so that you can receive EXE files, .reg files, or whatever you want.

85. If you like to listen to Internet radio stations, you can use a program called FreeCorder to record music that you play off the web.

86. Since we’re talking about only Windows freeware programs, you might be interested in Disk2VHD, a program from Sysinternals that will let you convert your current PC into a virtual machine that you can then load into Microsoft Virtual PC.

87. If you do a lot of buying online, such as through Amazon, eBay, etc, or checking of your bank accounts, etc, you might want to check out KeyScrambler, a cool program that protects against keyloggers.

88. Ever had to split a large file into a couple of pieces? If so, check out GSplit, a nitfy utility for splitting and re-joining files.

89. Been in a situation where you needed to compare two files and see the differences? WinMerge is a cool program that will let you compare and merge two files.

90. As for merging, ever had to merge several Powerpoint presentations together? Well you can use PowerPoint Joiner for that.

91. Or what about merging multiple PDF files together? If so, check out pdftk, a toolkit that lets you merge, split, and repair PDF files.

92. Wish you could listen to your home music collection while at the office or away from home? Check out Sockso, a personal home streaming music server.

93. Most browsers will download stuff to a default download folder, after which you have to manually move the files to where you want them. Download Mover is a really nice app that will monitor a folder for new files and automatically move them based on the rules you create.

94. Have you ever wondered if there was a way to password protect EXE files? Let’s say you didn’t want your kids to ever open Yahoo Messenger without typing in a password. You can password protect programs using Empathy.

95. Ever needed to figure out the RGB value or hexadecimal value of a color that is on your computer screen? ColorPic is a nice utility that lets you determine the hexadecimal RGB color for anything on your screen.

96. If you have a lot of MP3 files, you probably need to edit the tags and metadata so that everything shows up properly in iTunes or Winamp. You can use MP3tag or Picard to edit MP3 tags.

97. If you have just one monitor for your computer, you can use a virtual desktop manager like Dexpot to have several desktops on one computer. Another good one is 360 Desktop.

98. Have you ever had to copy a folder in Windows that had a bunch of sub-folders and files? You can use Unstoppable Copier to copy folders without any annoying Windows pop up messages.

99. Ever want ted create your own photo mosaic like they do in TV commericals? AndreaMosaic is cool program that will use your current photo collection to create a great looking photo mosaic.

Whew! That was probably way more than a hundred freeware programs, but hope you enjoyed it!

I’m sure there are lots of great programs I missed, so if you have a favorite freeware app, add it to the list via the comments! Enjoy! -TeChGuRu

Testing & Results

The hunt for the Fastest Browser on Earth - Part II, Judgment Day

Acid 3 Test Results:

Opera scored a flat 100 out of 100. So what? Both of the Chrome brothers caught up and even Safari managed to score the same. Firefox maintained its legacy with 94, Minefield though bettered its stable sibling with a score of 96. Oh yes, Internet Explorer 8 - shameful at a meager 20 out of 100, even less than the score of Mozilla Firebird, a pre-v1 build of Firefox which is over 5 years old! IE9 brings with it a ray of hope though, it did much better than IE8 but still far from its competition.

Dromaeo Test Suite Results:

As you can see, in all the benchmarks, the Chrome siblings are playing neck to neck. Opera runs close behind in nearly all these test and Safari is also a respectable performer. As for IE9, we can only tell you that the platform preview performed better than both the Firefox versions in all the tests except the CSS Selector, which it failed to perform.

You might have noticed Opera surpassing everyone by a mile in the Dromaeo test. This needs a little explanation here. As we said in the previous part, Dromaeo is actually a series of tests which are given internal weightages to come up with a final score. Under these tests: Firefox comes on top when its about Array & string operation, and Chrome is on top when its about "code executing & encoding/decoding". However, when we looked at another sub-test of Dromaeo, called the "Regular Expression" handling test, we found that Chrome does the best processing uncompiled data, while Opera performs 100 times better than its competitors when processing compiled data. Is this a fault in the Dromaeo test or is it a programming feat pulled of by the Opera team; something to do with their tweaks to the Native Code Generation? If so, then questions arise - why isn't this reflected in the other tests? Is this speed boost really going to make any real-world difference? And is this speed the highest Opera can achieve, or we can set our expectations even higher.

FutureMark PeaceKeeper Test:

This test from FutureMark presented some very interesting and varied results. Generally, Opera and Chrome [Dev] dominated on all the aspects and attributes tested. While Opera outperformed all others on its trademark feature - page rendering; Chrome [Dev] performed better than the rest when it came to Social Networking or Complex Graphics Manipulation. On the other hand, in text parsing and DOM Operations, Chrome [Dev] was a straight-set winner, while Chrome Stable and Opera competed for the 2nd place. IE9 was miles ahead of IE8; it still lacks the ability of complex graphics rendering though.

You may notice that Data handling/manipulation is not Opera's forte, whereas Firefox and Minefield produced a good result under this sub-test; Chrome [Dev] though, wins this round as well. So, if we combine the results: Chrome [Dev] comes as a Clear winner of this round. Opera and Chrome compete hard for a 2nd position; the Firefox siblings make for a somewhat satisfactory score sheet and Safari doesn't fare well on the page rendering test. One last thing: that even version 8 of Internet Explorer doesn't offer the minimal support for complex graphics, and no HTML5 abilities!

JSNES Rendering Speed Test:

As we will see in the results below, the Google siblings present a photo-finish, with Chrome [Dev] edging out the stable version by a very small margin; nonetheless, proving yet again that Chrome's V8 engine is the best for this task. Opera almost caught up to them in speed, but is still 3 per cent slower, which is a marginal difference. Safari comes across as a stable performer - it might not get much of a spotlight or blow through tests - but performs adequately across the board.

Last but not least, while Firefox didn't do too well here, Minefield kept crashing each time we tried to load the page (not unexpected considering it is a nightly build, so things might change; literally overnight). Internet Explorer (IE8 or IE9), failed to run this test as it does not support the tag (or HTML 5, for that matter).

In conclusion

In nearly all tests, Google Chrome was a consistently high-performer. From the performance of Opera 10.50, we can definitely say it's "one of the fastest browsers till date" - excelling in some aspects and keeping a good record for all facets, a definite improvement over its previous versions, and well suited for the web that lies ahead. Still "Earth's Fastest Browser", it is not -- not yet at least. Safari performs admirably, which is to be expected since it shares a core with Chrome, and is in fact the original webkit browser. Some may find it lacking in the user experience it offers but this is not a usability test, so we will avoid passing judgment on that front. Finally, with a heavy heart, we have to say - Mozilla, it's time to show us some magic. Firefox enjoys a healthy market share but it did not fare like a market leader ought to (never mind IE's performance). Unless Mozilla Firefox intends to be happy being just ahead of Internet Explorer 8 in most of the tests, things need to change fast on that front. Luckily there are some good signs of just that...

An aside

A point to note before we move on: If we had taken a note of performance against resource utilization, the result might vary significantly. Google Chrome is a behemoth in terms of runtime footprint, and even Safari doesn't play well at this. Opera 10.50 is a more balanced proposition here: it comes with moderate processor and memory usage (comparable to Firefox) but gave good results (comparable to Chrome). Internet Explorer 8 may be the most resource-friendly browser of them all - but we've all seen how it performs. As it stands, Internet Explorer 8 is the best tool to download another browser...

We didn't count exactly how many times a browser crashed during our tests - but surely, stability makes for an interesting aspect too. Being just a preview build, Minefield & Chrome [Dev] didn't crash as many times that we felt the need to remove them from a test (Minefield only crashed whenever we ran the JSNES test). On the contrary, despite being a stable release, Opera 10.50 crashed a few times; more than a stable release ought to. Rigorous usage of Internet Explorer 8, Safari and Chrome ended up in an odd crashed session or two, but Firefox didn't crash even once throughout the test period. Nice!

So the winner is...

Frankly, we would be hard-pressed to choose between Google Chrome and Opera 10.50 at this point. While Chrome's performance, user experience and even interface is a lot more futuristic than its competitors, Opera gives us a clue to how much improvement is possible in a browser's speed through native code generation. Opera 10.50's claim for being the "fastest" is not very far from the truth. If you go by numbers though, Chrome won - whether the stable version or the developer version, Google Chrome beats its competitors more often than not, and is the fastest browser out there, as of now. If there is one concrete conclusion to take away from this test, it's that Internet Explorer 8 performs the worst of the lot, but that dead horse has been flogged enough. We also ran some "real-world" tests on these browsers. Essentially, we ran sites heavy on JavaScript such as Google Wave, Threadsy, and so on. Except for Internet Explorer 8, now even Opera 10.50 can treat them well. But we noted that the site-browser interaction was not very uniform and consistent across these browsers. Minor and unusual, or unexpected behaviour was noted more than once. But usability and compatibility was not the focus of this test, it was only speed. So we thought it best to let this space open for you to test and comment on. Post your thoughts and share your personal user experience with a browser. After all, a browser is a very personal experience. - Team Digit

source : digit

The Browser Wars are heating up again. First there was the funeral party for Internet Explorer 6 (let's hope it stays buried), then we had the EU mandate for the Browser Ballot, a feature which has lead to the corrosion of the IE's install base, Firefox overtook Internet Explorer 7, and recently, we saw the release of Opera 10.50 - the self-proclaimed Fastest Browser on Earth... As we were putting up the finishing touches on this article Microsoft released a sneak peek of Internet Explorer 9; and not a moment too soon as you will learn soon.

Opera has long been playing the role of best supporting actor in the browser theater for the past 14 years. The past few years have seen relative upstarts - Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome - steal market share and mind share from this browser of yore. Popularity notwithstanding, Opera has always been the melting pot for new ideas and features, to which Turbo, and Unite are some of the latest additions. Opera's newest weapon - its brand new JavaScript compiling engine called "Carakan" (pronounced 'Jarakan') is claimed to sprint seven times faster than its previous "Futhark" engine. This definitely makes the browser faster than its predecessors, but how does it compare to its competitors?

When Opera proclaims something as bold as "Earth's Fastest Browser", we had to take a closer look and check the validity of this claim. Its competition is surely not sitting idle: Google Chrome's V8 engine is constantly being improved, as it evident from the performance gains in each dev release; Mozilla is polishing their SpiderMonkey engine with each new version, and en route to creating a new JavaScript engine, and Safari is tweaking its SquirrelFish engine - all trying their best to squeeze every drop from their JavaScript engines. With that in mind, we felt that the browsers needed to go against each other and show us what they've really got.

This article then is purely about which one of our favourite browsers is the Fastest. We haven't covered all the browsers under the sun but certainly all the usual suspects.

To that end, we will take a look at our favourite browsers' performance across two parts. The first part will take you through the tests we will throw at these browsers, describing in detail our reasoning for picking these tests and what to make of their results. In the second part, we shall produce the comparison data and benchmark details with the conclusion crowning the performance winner.

So before spilling out the names of the gladiators, let's checkout the proving-ground and the gauntlet each competitor will run through. Here's the list of tests that each of the browser took (spoiler alert - some failed these tests):

We ran all the tests on the same test machine, under the same test conditions.

Now let's take at our champs, while they are warming up for the big battle:

Web browser	Alias	Versions
Microsoft Internet Explorer	IE	8.0.7600.16385
Apple Safari 4	Safari	4.0.4 (531.21.10)
Opera 10.50	Opera	10.50 Build 3296
Google Chrome Stable	Chrome	4.0.249.89
Google Chrome Developer*	Chrome [Dev]	5.0.342.1
Mozilla Firefox	Firefox	3.6
Mozilla Firefox Nightly*	Minefield	3.7a3pre