FIREFOX 3.0 Review

I’ve been a long time Firefox fanboy. I was one of the 10,000 people who contributed, and had their name featured in the NY Times back in 2004. I’ve long preached to anyone who would listen that Firefox is a better alternative to Internet Explorer, particularly back in the days prior to IE 7.

Then my love affair with Firefox started to end. Firefox 1.5 (and the earlier versions, I started at 0.7) never skipped a beat, and unlike IE it had tabs, which were a god send to me as it was to many others. Mozilla launched Firefox 2.0, and suddenly my internet experience started to sour. I’m a heavy tab user, so it’s not unusual for me to have 15, 20 and even more tabs open, it’s how I read my feeds in the morning, opening up the stories that interest me for later reading. Firefox had what has been called by others “memory leaks,” which in laymen’s terms meant that it tripped out your memory on a PC, froze up and crashed…and far too regularly.

I became a Mac user this year, and the first thing I did when I started up OS X for the first time was to download Firefox, hoping that perhaps it was a PC problem. It wasn’t. Same memory problems, same crashes. Mac fanboys told me that it was my fault for using plugins, so I deleted Firefox and started again without the plugins. Same problems, constant freezing (even with 4gb on a MacPro) and crashes. I switched to Safari for a time, and as much as it was a decent browser, it doesn’t play nice with all sites, in particular with the WYSIWIG backend on Wordpress blogs.

Then came Flock 1.0. I’d never been a Flock fan before, always believing it to be nothing more than Firefox with plugins (Flock is based on the Firefox engine). Having watched the demo at TechCrunch 40 I downloaded the beta of Flock 1.0 and surfed away without incident. Some how the folks at Flock had tweaked the underlying Firefox engine to stop the memory issues.

I was hoping that Firefox 3.0 might finally fix the blight that was Firefox 2. Firefox 3 Beta 1 has been released for testing (download here) so I fired up Firefox 3 and Flock with the exact same tabs opened, hoping that perhaps Mozilla had finally heard the protests of its loyal user base. The stats (image right) say it all.

It didn’t crash in my testing, but having said that the test was fairly short. Firefox was never a browser to crash immediately, usually teasing the user with functionality for some time before deciding that enough was enough, then freezing or crashing all together some time later.
Others have more positive reviews of Firefox 3. I can only hope that by the time it gets to full release it’s as stable as Firefox 1.5 was.

Tweak VI (Vista Tweaking Tool)

Windows Vista : Tweak, optimize and enhance Vista with Tweak VI, a free utility.

The software provides a wealth of tools for messing with Vista's guts, including a boot-configuration manager, a CPU optimizer, browser-settings managers and tons more. I particularly like the addition of Windows-shutdown and -restart icons to both the desktop and Quick Launch toolbar. Granted, the freeware version gets you only so far; fully half the features require you to subscribe to one of the premium versions. But for anyone who likes to tinker with Windows and wants easy access to various Vista underpinnings, Tweak VI Basic is a great place to start. That version is free; it requires Windows Vista

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Add tabs to Windows desktop with Stick

Freeware app Stick adds tabs for RSS, calendar, explorer, notes, and the calculator to the Windows desktop. Stick tabs are highly customizable and can be relocated to any part of the screen. Stick leaves a light (10MB) memory footprint and opens Explorer, Calculator, and the calendar much faster than Windows on its own. By setting your tabs to remain on top and to auto-hide, you can have one-click access to some of your most frequently used apps without disturbing your desktop or existing apps. Stick also acts as a keyword launcher (Windows Key + Space) and has hotkeys baked in so you can access your tabs without the mouse. Stick ain't no Launchy, but its speed, light memory usage, and hotkeys make it well worth the college try. Stick is a free download for Windows only.

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Vista Drive icons for Windows XP/2000

Want to keep better tabs on your drive and partition space without having to right-click or open "My Computer"? Free application Vista Drive Icon replaces the standard hard drive icons with Vista-style models that display how much space is taken up and turn red when nearly full. The program runs in the background, shows up in almost every folder view and uses only a small amount of memory.

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Display Current Track and Artwork with CD Art Display

Display Current Track and Artwork with CD Art Display

Windows only: Freeware application CD Art Display shows your currently playing track's name, artist and album art in attractive floating skins, in addition to several other useful and completely customizable options. Like previously mentioned moreTunes, CD Art Display supports almost any player you might be using and can automatically download album art if it's missing (though it may not be super high quality), but it also has killer features like customizable hotkeys for playing and skipping tracks and tons of attractive skins. In addition to the floating display, you'll also see your album art embedded in the system tray menu, which is a nice touch. CD Art Display is freeware, Windows only

DOWNLOAD HERE size 1.3mb

Make your Taskbar Transparent

Add transparency to your Windows taskbar and give yourself slightly more usable desktop real estate with freeware application TransBar. While the latter claim (more desktop space) may seem like nonsense, it's especially true for two-row taskbar folks like myself who don't like auto-hiding the taskbar. Whether you want a touch more desktop space or you just want to keep in step with your favorite Windows desktops, TransBar is a simple, lightweight utility that can do both. TransBar is freeware, Windows only.

DOWNLOAD HERE size 87.2kb

USB 3.0: 10 times Faster than USB 2.0:

USB, that little rectangular plug that can be found on just about every computer peripheral cable you come across, is one of the biggest success stories in the history of computing. Ditching the slow serial and parallel cables of yore and replacing them with a fast, universal standard that could draw power and allowed connecting of dozens of peripherals without rebooting... well, it was genius. When USB 2.0 arrived, with much faster performance, it got even better. It's not hyperbole to say that USB, despite its humble status as a mere connector, is one of the most important computer technologies to ever be invented.

Well, USB fans, things are going to get even more interesting and soon. USB 2.0 may be fast enough right now, but with more high-definition video products arriving and bigger and bigger files being transferred, that won't be the case forever. Enter USB 3.0, which moves the bandwidth needle from 480Mbps to roughly 4.8Gbps, 10 times faster than the current version.
The new standard, which was recently demonstrated using a new optical cable (but the same connector), will be backward compatible with older USB formats and promises better power efficiency, too, in order to decrease the load on portable devices. Possibly in the works: Better ability to charge devices over USB, some of which still require an A/C adapter or two USB connections to draw enough juice.

Specs are planned to be delivered early next year with commercial availability for 2009. Just do us a favor and clearly label USB 3.0 products with an appropriate logo this time! (USB 2.0 got caught up in a mini scandal when vendors started labeling USB 1.1 products as "USB 2.0 capable," with vendors later claiming they only meant the products worked with USB 2.0 connections. Fail!)