Choose a Web Browser for Windows

Choosing a web browser might be something that most people don't even consider, many people end up using the standard browser on their computer or downloading the same one that they're using in the office. The facts are though, your web browser can alter your online experience and no two (or the three we will look at today) browsers are the same. They have different customizations, use your hardware differently and they all run at different speeds. If you're looking to find the best browser for your own needs, read on below.

Internet Explorer is the default browser for everyone using a Windows PC. Compared to the other browsers we will look at today, Internet Explorer is the most established and according to statistics it is the second most popular browser in use today having lost first place to Google Chrome. Microsoft has made a big push in recent years to not only gain back market share but to address the problems that pushed users away from Internet Explorer in the first place.

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   Reasons for Internet Explorer

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   1. The latest version has multiple touch based features including pinch gestures, hover touch and drag and drop touch support. This means that if you are using a touch based Windows 8 device there's really no better alternative than Internet Explorer.
   2. Strong HTML5 and Flash support.
   3. The latest version has sync across multiple devices. This means that your history, tabs, passwords and settings are available on any Windows 8 device that you're logged in to.
   4. In various benchmarking tests, Internet Explorer has the fastest page load times as well as the fastest start up times for the application itself.

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   Reasons against Internet Explorer

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   1. Internet Explorer is one of the slowest browsers when running pages using JavaScript. By all modern standards it's relatively fast but both Chrome and Firefox are faster.
   2. Syncing across devices only works reliably in Windows 8 with Internet Explorer 11. If you're using other versions of the browser on other computers or you are using Windows phone, the browsers will not sync.

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Of the three main browsers available today, Google Chrome was the last to be released. When Chrome first came out it featured unmatched speed in page loads, flash performance and JavaScript performance. As time has gone by, the others have caught up but Chrome is still a very fast and capable browser that has some compelling reasons to make it your choice, especially if you are using other Google services.

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   Reasons for Google Chrome.

    

   1. Google services work best with Chrome. Google uses their own browser engine to load pages and as expected, Google's own products perform best inside this browser. So if you are using Google Docs, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps or any of the other services provided by Google then running this browser should be your first choice.
   2. Syncing your favorites, history, tabs and logins, unlike in Internet explorer, works across multiple devices. So as long as you are running chrome on those devices and log in with your Google account, you are good to go.
   3. If no longer the fastest, Chrome is still second best in most benchmarks and still number one in JavaScript support.

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   Reasons against Chrome

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   1. Chrome loves to use your RAM. Of the three browsers we are looking at here, Chrome uses the most resources of all. In a test of 40 identical tabs open across the three browsers, Chrome used a whopping 1512MB compared to the best performer at just 768MB. Single tab use was also resource heavy with Chrome using 122MB to show a simple page compared to the 40MB that Internet Explorer used. If you don't have a lot of RAM in your computer and you need to work with a lot of tabs then the general speediness of Chrome could be negated by overtaxing your system resources and slowing down your whole PC.
   2. Google is an advertising company and uses anonymous data collection to target advertisements as well as build advertising profiles for future use. Although they're open about what they do and the data collection is limited, some users are adverse to this type of behavior and if you're one of them you might be better looking at another browser.

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Mozilla Firefox was the first notable challenger to Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the early 00s, gaining over 100 million users in the first year it was released. Firefox is mostly open sourced software that developers can build on with extensions and customizations but this also means that the browser is open to security and performance issues. When it's running well though, Firefox is a fast and popular browser choice.

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   Reasons for Firefox.
    
   1. Extensions and Customization. The sheer number of add-ons for Firefox make it a browser worth looking at. The various password managers, gesture control plugins and user themes make it the favorite browser of many power users.
   2. Memory usage is minimal. Firefox uses the least memory of any browser under multi-tab browsing stress tests and is second only to Internet Explorer in single tab performance.
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