Which Internet Browser Would You Recommend Has The Fastest Speed?

In my good old college days in the early 1990s, I had hardly heard of any other browser other than Netscape Navigator to surf the web. When given a choice, we all are tempted to try and pick the best one, and when Internet Explorer was offered bundled with Windows 95, IE seemed to be a better choice. Since then to these days where you have all sorts of computer gadgets, I have been a great fan through all the versions of Internet Explorer, until the current version. The speed at which it starts up, the ease of handling settings, the comfort of operating that even a non-computer person could use it, the available addons, regular updates, bug fixes, support, everything conducive of a safer browsing experience made me an undoubted fan of it all these days. However, since Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 9 and above will be available only for operating systems above Windows XP, I started looking at other options to keep myself equipped with the speediest browser.

As you all know, since the turn of this century the choices are many encouraging the use of multiple browsers, each one for a specific purpose; one for secured and private browsing, the other for blogging and SEO purposes, the third for general surfing, another for speedy browsing and so on. Having multiple browsers in my machine also aided in checking the cross browser compatibility of my sites. Hence at any point in time, there used to be 3-4 browsers on my machine. The main advantage of having multiple browsers in your system is that, you don’t have to get panicked if one browsing software crashes or gives trouble of any sort. Close the troubled one and continue with another. They don’t occupy that much space of your C-drive as well, just a few MBs if you have the latest one with no plugins or addons installed.

I started trying Apple Safari some years back. I have to admit that it stole my heart initially as I felt it was speedy than the Google Chrome initially. As days passed by, I somehow lost that initial love due to comparatively slow starts, a feeling of reduced speed over time etc.; however, still I feel it is speedier than Opera and Firefox in starting up and opening up a page.

The other browser that I tried these days is Opera especially for its faster browsing feature Opera Turbo Mode for slow Internet connections which claims that it can load web pages up to five times faster than other browsers by compressing the web pages through its servers. However, the speed at which it loads web pages failed to impress me.

Firefox was already there on my list of browsers for the past so many years for the various, 5000+ addons and plugins that enhance the surfing and blogging experience, however, at the cost of speed! As others, Firefox too became slow over time in starting up and loading pages and hence found its way out of my mind.

Google Chrome was there with me since the day it was made available for public and somehow it never got my attention it deserved due to the simple appearance and the lack of toolbar which made me feel that I am missing something. However, of late it has stolen my heart by the speed at which it starts up, loads pages, auto updates to the new versions etc. I have Internet Explorer 9 on my laptop that runs on Vista but after getting used with Chrome, somehow I am unwilling to go back! It seems that is the case with every other person on the web as you could see the steadily treading up graph of Chrome in the global browser share statistics. I have kept it free of plugins and addons so that it never loses its speed. Google wants a faster web and want to make the sites faster. Of course, that process has to begin from a faster browser!

So which is your favorite browser? Which Internet browser would you recommend has the fastest speed?