I am writing this blog post using Google Chrome, the latest web browser to hit the market. I’ve been using it on and off for a few days and I like it for the most part.
(Sadly, just now, Chrome suddenly logged me out of the blog interface and lost all my work! Apparently the auto-save wasn’t working. I’ll see if I can remember what I wanted to tell y’all.)
The browser launches really quickly compared with IE 7 and Firefox 3. It’s almost instant.
Once the thing is running, you have to get used to the lack of menus at the top of the window. In Chrome, all the menus are tucked away in the upper-right corner.
Something neat is the “Create application shortcuts…” function.

It allows you to add a desktop or Quick Launch icon for your favourite website. This way, you have something like Gmail launch in its own window, looking very much like a standalone application. Very neat.
Something else very neat is “incognito browsing,” which Apple Safari has had since its inception. (Apple calls it “private browsing.”) It allows you to browse the net without a record kept of where you’ve been and what you’ve typed.
Back to basics: Chrome is very good at loading most pages, although there are a few hiccups in this department.
For example, Hotmail tells me my browser is obsolete and needs to be upgraded to IE, Firefox or Safari.
And until recently, some menus in the “new” Facebook wouldn’t function properly. This appears to have been fixed today.
But something in Facebook that still isn’t working is the photo uploader. You get a plug-in error instead.
I’m sure there will be more things along the way that will throw Chrome for a loop. Maybe that’s why the developers made it very easy for you to report whatever could be wrong.

A few caveats, though:
1) If you’ve got an old, slow, or old-and-slow computer, beware. I loaded Chrome onto my sister’s computer and boy, was it ever slow to load pages and whatnot. Under the hood: An Athlon 2600+ (or something similar) with about 1 GB of RAM. A little disappointing, seeing how Firefox 2 and IE 7 run just fine on her machine.
2) I’ve encountered some random errors where Chrome isn’t able to connect with a website even though everything works just fine with IE or Firefox.

One poster to a Google Help group suggest it may have something to do with multiple ethernet ports on a machine.
I will post further on this matter if I come up with more insights or observations as I use Chrome over time.