AIM is the primary instant messenger I use. Out of all the IM services I’ve used over the years, it is the most reliable. In addition, it runs flawlessly on any operating system. Whether you’re on Windows, Mac or Linux, you can run AIM.

The latest client offering on the Windows platform is AIM 7 Beta 2.

Short review:

It’s awesome. If you use AIM, get it.

Long review:

This is best given in points.

• If you run multiple computers at home, you can run it on each computer at the same time. Previously I was only able to do this with AIM Lite.
• Following in the footsteps of AIM Express, messages from those not on your contact list will prompt a window asking if you want to chat with them or not. Previously this wasn’t there.
• Linked accounts work great. In addition, you can have them all set to invisible on login instead of having to set each individually.
• The interface is a whole lot cleaner and a lot less "cartoony" (something Yahoo and Windows Live suffer from in abundance).
• "Me" tab makes it super-easy to manage blocked users in just two clicks (you had to really dig for this previously).
• Integrates with Facebook and Twitter easily with new "Lifestream" tab.
• Integrates with Delicious and YouTube.
• Runs light and doesn’t eat up memory.
• I tested on my XP laptop and Win 7 PC. Runs great on both.

AIM 7 is full of awesome stuff. If you use AIM, you will really like this client.

Since Google Chrome has a new version I decided to download and check it out to see what’s new.

Here’s what happened:

First, on attempt to load in a YouTube video, the plugin crashed. Not a very good start.

After that I had to manually go into my Task Manager to stop the browser processes because it would not shut down on its own.

Then I found out that on install the browser put in a resident file called GoogleUpdater.exe without telling me (or if it did, I never saw the option to choose, "NO, DON’T DO THAT") and has it run on every Windows startup. Not cool. Not cool at all. I had to manually edit my startup sequence just to get rid of the stupid thing.

After all that crapola, here’s the good stuff. Well, not really.

Do web pages load faster?

Yes. All sites seem to load quicker.. that is when Flash "agrees" with the browser and doesn’t hose it.

Do tabs load faster?

No. Firefox still beats it because Chrome has a dippy animation that slows it while Firefox does not. And of course there’s no way to shut the animations off. Firefox gives you instantaneous gratification. Chrome does not.

And the Chrome animation is not like those super-cool ones you see in Mac OS X, Windows 7 or Ubuntu with Compiz (which can all by shut off by the way). Instead you have totally unnecessary animation that just wastes time.

Why does this matter at all? Because if the browser is supposed to promote speed, those animations shouldn’t be there, period.

Is it easier to manage your bookmarks?

No. Here’s why:

Bookmark a site in Google Chrome. Oh wait, silly me.. I forgot.. the browser didn’t tell you how. You have to click the star icon next to the web address.

Okay, so the star lights up. Cool! But where did your bookmark go? Where is it?

Oh wait, I forgot.. you have to press CTRL+B or the wrench icon at far right, click Always show bookmarks bar and THEN it shows up – something else the browser didn’t tell you how to do either.

Firefox has an ingenious way of handling bookmarks. Ready? It’s called "Bookmarks" at the top of the browser. Wow! Oh wait.. that’s been in web browsers ever since they were invented.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but the Google Way of mucking up something as stupidly easy as bookmarks just plain sucks.

Can you extend Chrome like you can with Firefox?

Yes, but not in the way we’d hoped.

With Firefox there is a central location for this, addons.mozilla.org.

With Chrome, well.. you’ve got third-party sites.

But then there’s no plugin/add-on manager in Chrome, so you don’t know what’s being installed, and furthermore don’t know how to get rid of an add-on afterwards.

The only saving grace to Chrome is its speed

You’ve probably seen many web sites saying, "Yeah! Chrome rocks! Fast! Speed-speed-speed! Woo-hoo!", provided with a bunch of benchmarks flexing it’s muscle, so to speak.

Is Chrome fast? Yes, obviously. The fastest? No, that honor still belongs to Lynx and always will. Fastest GUI-based browser? Quite possibly.

However all this speed comes at the expense of anything else that would make a browser better for you, the user.

If you want a barebones browser done the Google Way where you have to relearn simple things like Bookmarks, then yeah, you’ll like Chrome.

I know there’s going to be some Chromeheads that will gladly tell me I’m wrong, and that Chrome is the bestest super-duper-pooper awesomest browser ever.

I beg to differ. Benchmarks does not a browser make. Ease-of-use and extensibility does; that’s why Chrome loses.

The last time I used IE 8 I had to stop using it because it was reported that it broke Windows Update. But being that I just reinstalled XP on my older Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop I decided to give IE 8 a go to see what had been improved since it’s in Beta 2.

My particular laptop was a good test bed for this because it’s an older machine with a 1.5GHz Celeron M with 1GB of RAM, and testing newer software on older hardware is a good test to see if performance has improved or not. Continued