[Ghostavo]

Opera, because it's both fast and has a nice user interface.

[Scotty]

Currently using IE, can't complain.  Then again, I've only ever used IE, so take that how you will.

Brother, you can complain.

...by which I meant that I'm satisfied by IE's performance.

[General Battuta]

Currently using IE, can't complain.  Then again, I've only ever used IE, so take that how you will.

Brother, you can complain.

...by which I meant that I'm satisfied by IE's performance.

I'm satisfied with my mud hut in southeastern Bangladesh too. I have never been anywhere else! My children all have malaria and my fields flood every spring, but there could be nothing better.

Try a browser that isn't a weeping security and performance abscess, even if it's just the pre-release version of the next Internet Explorer. Very little is worse for your computer than using one of the older IEs.

[The E]

No holy browser wars, please.

[General Battuta]

he didn't want to use when-arguments either and now he loves them

[headdie]

Chrome for day to day use

Opera for the small number of sites which dont like chrome and IRC

[Scotty]

he didn't want to use when-arguments either and now he loves them

Well, I still don't use them very often.

[Mika]

Opera at home, FF3 at work.

I'm starting to think I should migrate to Opera at work too. The responsiveness of newer Firefoxes has started to become an issue with a dual core laptop. Dual core laptop I say! And while at it, I'll likely change the Acrobat Reader to Foxit Reader.

So far Opera has been quite nice.

[Dark Hunter]

IE on my desktop, mainly because I can't be bothered to install Firefox on it.

Firefox on my laptop... because. Don't really have a reason. *shrugs*

[watsisname]

FF 3.6.15 for me still, though I am considering trying out Chrome.  My main reasons for sticking with FF are scriptblocker (love it) and a hatred/procrastination for switching programs unless I absolutely have to.  (It took me ages just to abandon IE)

[Scourge of Ages]

What browser would be the best for an old, old cheap laptop? It's really struggling with more than 3 tabs at once, currently.

[IceFire]

What browser would be the best for an old, old cheap laptop? It's really struggling with more than 3 tabs at once, currently.

That's a good question. My brother's netbook runs slightly better on Chrome than anything else. IE would be a close second thanks to sharing some core resources with the OS. Chrome would be my suggestion... if it doesn't work try something else

I'm a fan of keeping up with browsers. So far the only one I really truly don't like is Safari on Windows. On Mac OS it's fine but on Windows it doesn't feel like a native application at all. Plus the reports suggest quite a few more security issues than most of the other types and slower turn arounds. Firefox and Chrome are the two I prefer the most... although IE9 beta had me for a while and I love the simplicity in the new design.

Recently I've gone from Firefox to Chrome. Chrome runs better on the whole (version 10 came out today... very fast!) and each tab is process independent (and has been for a while now) so if some website with a screwy plugin does manage to screw things up, it's just the one tab. Everything else is fine. Firefox isn't quite there yet on this one.

Firefox still has the edge in plugins but Chrome's new App Store approach is very seemless too. Just not all of the tools are available that I want yet.

[Flipside]

I use FF, have done for a good few years. I got a bit nervous when IE was going through a "Vulnerability -> Patch -> Vulnerability" cycle, tried FF for a while, and found that it did what I wanted quite effectively. Probably Chrome would be better for me because I really don't need bells and whistles with my browsing, but since FF is installed, there's no real point to changing.

[LHN91]

How old and cheap of a laptop is it? I've successfully run Chrome reasonably well on a P3 1Ghz with less than 512 Mb of RAM. Just don't try to use youtube. Opera is the other option for a system like that, but the last time i used it regularly was pre-version 10, and it has bloated a bit since then. That ran well enough for email in windows 98 with a Celeron 433 lol.

[Flipside]

Seems odd that anything above Pentium level should struggle to run a browser anyway, that implies bloating to me.

[NGTM-1R]

When I switched computers, Firefox's storing things in active memory became far less of an issue so I went to that. Although I still have to kill the plugins process to fire up a game on occasion.

I may drift over to IE9 as a newer generation of more system-resources intensive games gets onto my computer.

[LHN91]

If all you care about is that it opens and runs, yeah, anything that is capable of installing XP (i.e. Pentium 1 233 with 64 Mb RAM) should be able to run a web browser. But on an old system, the amount of RAM and the slowness of the hard drive, compounded with the fact that browsers like Firefox 3.6 tend to eat upwards of 40 Mb per page at a minimum, necessitating paging, leaves you with only the smaller browsers truly usable. Atm, the smallest reasonably useable browsers are chrome and opera.

[Flipside]

It's ironic if you think that, at heart, a browser is just glorified terminal software that is supposed to transmit/recieve information as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I think that the problem is that the Internet itself runs contrary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the longer it exists the more complex it becomes, rather than working towards a more simplified, universal transmission system, it just gets more and more complex. I cannot remove IE from my computer (even if the system would let me) for example, because some sites (Windows update being the most notable) won't run on anything else.

I personally think this may well become a problem in the future.

[Fury]

IE9 final will be released next Monday. IE9 RC worked very well, it is fast and lean browser, definitely a huge improvement over older IE's. Won't be available on Windows XP though apparently, which is a good thing since that obsolete OS should be upgraded already.

Chrome has been my default browser for very long time and I can't see myself switching to any other browser other than perhaps IE9 for simplicity. Only IE9's upcoming track record of security issues and other problems will tell whether I stick with Chrome or go with IE9. Firefox 3 has been a huge disappointment, which is why I went with Chrome in the first place. I don't see FF4 changing that, though I haven't actually bothered to try any of the FF4 betas or the new RC. Nothing so far has indicated FF4 performs better than Chrome, so I don't really have a reason to try.

[S-99]

And while at it, I'll likely change the Acrobat Reader to Foxit Reader.

Pdf readers. By far adobe acrobat is sludge with bloat. Foxit reader is better, but not too much by far. Both bother you with updates and bull****.

The best i've found was evince. Download for windows here.

Evince is the gnome desktop environment document viewer for linux. It's simply what you expect; to look at documents in this case with the focus on pdf's. No annoying reminders for updates, no bloat, it's easy to use, and it's great. Currently replacing adobe acrobat installations at city hall with evince. For windows, it's the most hassle free pdf viewer i could find. So glad they it for windows too.