Chrome is fast. That had always been a big advantage. It made better use of screen real estate, particularly in how the way tabs are rendered in the UI. (Safari did it the Chrome way during one of its beta phases, but the final release versions reverted to the traditional tabbed interface.)

But I’ve always been a stickler for standards compliance and interoperability. I loved Safari because it aced the Acid3 tests with a perfect score. No other web browser managed that. Not including Chrome, even though it was also based on WebKit like Safari is.

Chrome has made great strides. It now also gets a perfect score on the Acid3 tests. On top of that, on the HTML5 compliance tests, Chrome actually edged out over Safari (although by a small margin). It’s a little surprising, because I had the impression that Safari would have made HTML5 support a priority. At least that’s what Apple seems to want to support. Or perhaps it was just marketing strategy, because Steve Jobs did not want to support Adobe Flash. Well, Chrome wins HTML5 compliance right now.

Chrome on Mac OS X also integrates properly into the Mac way of doing things. For example, the idea that passwords are centrally managed in Keychain.

So now… is it the right time to switch?

Update: My own benchmarks seem to show (by visual impression) that Safari actually loads up faster than Chrome, on a MacBook Pro. The difference is very marginal, but it is noticeable. I’m quite surprised. But in terms of memory usage (observed from Activity Monitor), Chrome is very significantly more memory efficient than Safari.

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Chrome OS boots up fast and without any fanfare (or visual effects or gibberish). I suppose it is quick enough, so there is no need to keep the user sitting in front of it occupied with any sort of visual entertainment. The first screen you see is the login screen. You need a Google account (or Gmail account) to login. I was thinking to myself right away, this is my computer, why do I need to have a Google account to use my computer? Well, I guess this is the age where the Internet is the computer. So, yes, you need some sort of Internet citizenship credentials to access your own computer.

Once you’re logged in, the Google Chrome web browser occupies the whole screen. The whole computer is about the browser. If you’re familiar with, or have at least tried, the Chrome web browser, this is really the same thing. There are only just a few little differences like the icons in the top right corner of the screen, which are kind of the equivalent of the icons in the system tray in the bottom right of your Windows desktop. One icon is for your power status, the next is for network connections, and the last one serves to access the Chrome web browser’s menu functions.

Chrome OS is still early in its development, and it clearly shows. There’s nothing but just the web browser. That’s fine since Google wants everything to work through the web browser. But what do I do with connecting local devices, like printers, a USB drive, a webcam, etc? It’s not there yet. I suppose it has got to have it at some point. I don’t suppose it’s much fun to be paying hundreds of dollars to own your personal Internet kiosk. Even then, the real Internet kiosks probably also connect printers, USB drives and webcams.

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