I was sitting here, contemplating making a really long winded opening sentence, but I figured eh. New gadget getting is exciting and should never be less than exciting.

I ordered it, what feels like, a very long time ago. Must have been just about a month. (Im)Patiently waiting for delivery since and I finally got my grubby mitts on it last night. When I say grubby, I do mean it. It’s got a matte finish and that just about shows up anything that’s ever touched it. Oh well!

What is it? It’s a Sony Vaio F-Series. 16" screen, 1920×1080 resolution, full HD display, a lovely 6GB of RAM, stunning i5 Intel processor, yummy NVIDIA GeForce graphics card and a free blu-ray player/writer drive! I’ll be able to play PoP without my laptop having a mini meltdown. Oh and it’s running Windows 7, which is completely new for me, so full expecting myself to have a few ‘moments’ with it.

I’ve only ever had Dell laptops, and before I ventured into laptops I used to build my own PCs. I miss that to an extent. I loved being able to connfigure something exactly to how I wanted it and just be able to add to it. But the portability of my laptop just can’t be beaten. Sitting in front of the TV with laptop – can’t do that with a desktop tower PC!

So yes, I have a new laptop. Haven’t had much of a chance to play around with it. Last night was all about getting the fatty Vaio software off. The next few nights will be spent getting all my stuff off my old laptop and installing all the software I need on my new toy. ‘Citing!

Through my little ‘experiment’ I was finding myself adding increasing number of extensions to my Chrome for things which were a bit more standard in Firefox. I can understand this being a good thing – having a blank slate for an Internet browser and the user being able to customize it exactly to their tastes. However when I found I couldn’t simple right-click on an image and view the image properties I got a little bit peeved.

Maybe I’m missing something, in which case point me out where I have missed this! But for work it’s quite important for me to be able to do something like that quickly. Yes, I had installed Firebug and the usual web development tools, but it’s not quite the same.

Another work related issue I was having was the inability to simply drag and drop images from a website to Adobe Photoshop. Of course there was the option to copy the image and paste into Photoshop, but like the image properties issue, it’s not quite the same.

I was almost willing to gloss over losing these simple piece of functionality purely based on the speed of Chrome and the lack of crashes. It was just that quick compared to Firefox. Opening new tabs and the website rendering in the new tab – that speed was definitely quicker than Firefox, though I didn’t sit there with a stopwatch timing it.

Having a decent web screenshot extension was another losing factor for Chrome. Fireshot is just the perfect web screenshot extension. Whereas Pixlr Grabr really can’t compete.

I’ll be more than willing to jump onto the Chrome bandwagon, when it’s developed a bit more and has lost the ‘out-of-the-box’ feeling it currently has. In the meantime I’ll stuck with my trusty Firefox and hope Mozilla can keep up with Google’s development on Chrome.

The fact that I’m still using it now bodes well for it. I’ve really enjoyed using it. Mostly from the speed aspect of the browser. It’s a lot faster and slicker at loading heavy pages. Noticeably quicker than Firefox, which has been a refreshing change. Also I’ve noted no crashes while using the browser, either at work or at home. Usually at work the Firefox crashes at least once a day and I’m having to restart my whole computer sometimes. That could just be my work PC, but I’ve not had any crashes at home with Chrome, which I would have had too.

There’s a few things I’m still getting used to. Like in Firefox I would simply type whatever website’s name I wanted to go to, hit enter and Firefox would take me there. I know it’s doing a little Google search, but it was a ’1-click’ thing for me. Meanwhile with Chrome if I were to do that I’d be taken to the search engine of my choice. I know the answer would come in the drop down as I was typing in the address bar, but not used to it yet!

I am missing a couple of extensions. I’m missing Echofon for Twitter a fair bit. Just the fact that it has the ability to have multiple accounts is what I miss. If I only had 1 Twitter account Chromed Bird would be fine.

The other Firefox extension I really miss is Fireshot for taking whole website screen grabs. The alternative Webpage Screenshot is working out OK, just doesn’t have the functions I’m used to with Fireshot.

Still, those couple of things aren’t stopping me sticking with Chrome. Let’s see how the next week goes!

Starting this morning I decided to make the switch at work to Google’s Chrome. I’ve used Chrome on and off for little bits here and there but never really made the switch. No real reason why, other than I was used to Firefox. So, the same reason why many people have stuck with IE then?

Why have I chosen Chrome for my Firefox alternative?
Quite simply – it’s my next best bet for a good browser with extensions and isn’t IE. Good enough answer?

I was pleasantly surprised when I installed Chrome and it not only transferred all my bookmarks, but also my browsing history, cookies and all. So the move over to Chrome was made all the less painful! Next step was extensions.

Firefox has such an amount and variety of extensions I was a bit cautious as to whether Chrome could match it. It can’t. Yet. But there’s a decent amount of extensions so far in their stock. For work though I missed having the web developer toolbar that has been faithfully stuck to my Firefox browser for as long as I can remember. Thankfully Chrome does have Firebug Lite so I feel somewhat covered for work.

Also essential for work is Chromed Bird. Twitter client for Google Chrome. Yes it’s work, but we all need a little divergence at times. Echofon was my Firefox work Twitter client. Chromed Bird is so far so good, however it lacking multiple account ability is a definite downside.

I’l be trying to find some more extensions as this week goes by and will report on anything interesting!

After one day’s worth of work on Chrome I have to say I am impressed. It’s slick, quick and seemingly effortless. We’ll see how I feel at the end of the week and the computer’s been running with a million applications.

Sidenote – I’ve switched to Chrome at home too. Is it a sign?