Observations on Chrome

I have been using Chrome for almost a month on XP SP3 (on a Compaq 8610p), Windows 2003 Server (on a Dell GX260) and OSX 10.6.3 (on a 2007 17" Macbook Pro).  I have been comparing it to IE8, Firefox and Camino (**I don't like Safari and try to avoid it as much as possible**). So far:

- It is not noticeably faster than a basic Firefox install w/out any plugins.
- It is noticeably faster than IE on both versions of windows.
- It is not noticeably faster than Camino.
- I found a problem with my java install on the W23 box because Chrome kept choking on certain java heavy sites.  Once I fixed java Chrome was fine.
- It does not have the same range of security oriented plugins that Firefox does.
- I tried to use it on my work's Intranet and it failed hard.  For perspective, Firefox has some issues as well & IE, while slow, performs the best.  Being a corporate Intranet I am assuming it is all MS oriented.
- Blogger Dashboard is more responsive in Chrome.
- Gmail is the same in Firefox and Chrome, I don't go to Gmail with IE.
- MobileME is slow on all three browsers, in Windows and OSX.
    :: aside:: (You would think, as a selling point, Apple would want MobileME to be snappy on their platform...)

Overall, Chrome is fine.  I think Firefox is better, primarily because of the plugin "NoScript".  But even without "NoSCript", Chrome doesn't outperform Firefox, at least not in the way I use a browser.  Which shouldn't be a surprise I suppose.  Browsers are basically rendering engines/ code interpreters and as such, all browsers will have their performance dictated by the OS and hardware they are running on.

    :: aside:: (I saw Google's Chrome ad emphasizing the speed of page loads.  I am surprised they put out such an obvious piece of spin.  The absurdness of it made me laugh.)

Google Voice Account Transfer

So, for reasons that are not important to this post, I needed/wanted to transfer my Google Voice number from one gmail account to another gmail account. A little research on google showed that Google does not support this but then I found a forum post indicating that it was possible.

If you use the Google Transfer Form you can transfer your Google Voice from one gmail account to another gmail account. There are a few conditions and qualifications so read the thread I posted and the form carefully.

I used this successfully and received my confirmation that the transfer was complete in about 4 hours. Others have reported that it took longer for them so your milage may vary.