If you have not yet downloaded Google’s Chrome browser — sorry, as of now only offered in beta for Windows XP and Vista — then I urge you to make the time. My initial reactions are that it’s enough like Firefox to be familiar, sufficiently improved over Firefox to be worth the effort of migration, and sufficiently faster at many tasks that it’s likely to become my default tool — on Windows — for anything more than simple browsing.

Until I can launch Chrome on Mac OS X, and until it’s also available for Linux, I have to keep a leash on my enthusiasm: a Windows-only browser is a technology demo, not a way of life. That said, Chrome bids fair to serve as existence proof for some lifestyle choices that I’d like to have the option of making.