Chrome 10: Close to a perfect Web Browser 10

Summary

The latest version of Chrome, just out, is amazingly fast. I mean its knock your socks off fast.

I’ve liked the Google Chrome Web browser since it first showed up in 2008. Today, with the slipstream release of Chrome 10, I may finally be ready to retire all my other Web browsers.
The reason I’m considering doing this is quite simple. Chrome 10 is screamingly fast. It’s more than ten-times faster than its first version was in dealing with JavaScript. It also leads all other of today’s Web-browsers when it comes to raw JavaScript processing speed with its new “Crankshaft” V8 JavaScript engine.
Update: I, and a lot of my readers, were puzzled about why this set of SunSpider results showed IE 9 doing so badly compared to Chrome 10, so I took a closer look. This time IE 9 took first by a nose.
How much faster? Well on the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark 0.91 test, Chrome left most, but not all of the other Web browsers eating its dust. I tested Chrome 10 on my Mint Linux 10 PC and was impressed. For benchmarking it though I decided to run it on my Windows 7 SP 1 system so that the forthcoming Internet Explorer 9 could get its innings in.
My Windows 7 test PC is a Gateway DX4710. This PC is powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and has 6GBs of RAM and an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. It’s no speed demon, but it gets the job done. It’s hooked to the Internet via a Netgear Gigabit Ethernet switch, which, in turn, is hooked up to a 25Mbps (Megabit per second) cable Internet connection. On this system, I then ran the SunSpider benchmarks three times for each browser,
IE 9, despite my hopes that it would show better, came in, a dismal last with a mark of only 1,185.8-ms (milliseconds). As for IE 8…. Well let’s just say it lagged even further back. That said, it should be kept in mind that only a year ago IE 9’s numbers would have been great. Today, not so much. IE 9 was followed by Firefox 3.6.15, the latest shipping version, with 945.0ms.
Apple’s Safari 5.03 took third place in my impromptu Web browser drag race with an impressive 422.1ms mark. And, coming up right behind Chrome, there was the Firefox 4 beta 12 with a time of 388.0ms. But, winning by a small margin, there was Chrome 10 with a speed of 321.0ms.
If it were speed alone, it would be a close race, but while Chrome 10’s pure speed is impressive, it’s not the whole story.