After a ‘catastrophic failure’ (windows terms) I’m reinstalling windows 7 as I type…

I was running Chrome, but was starting to get hacked off with its crashes, particularly when watching flash video – iplayer and the like.

Sooo, what are folk using? I imagine Chrome is still very very popular, but I’m after light hardware requirements and speedy usage with minimal baggage.

Any ideas?

Firefox or Safari for me. I really don’t like Explorer at all.

I mainly use Firefox, Opera is also worth trying.

Firefox here, but am also aware that chrome and opera are quite good. Can’t stand either personally though, but cause of little details.

Chrome on this tablet.

Firefox on my Linux laptop.

IE (bleurgh!) on my work machine, but only because our MIS software doesn’t always play nicely with Chrome or Firefox on Windows.

Opera for my phone / netbook, up until a few weeks ago I was using opera on my PC but changed to chrome because more websites function / look properly with it, even though its MUCH slower / more bloated than opera.

Chrome, and I never have any problems with it!

Safari and Chrome, principally Safari.

I use chrome at work, and it’s massively stable and very good – I do like it a lot. But that’s on a very very quick machine with loads of resources. But on my home laptop, it just crashes. and crashes. and crashes…

Maybe I’ll try it again for a while and see how it goes…

Ie 9 is actually pretty good and I use it out of Choice

But on my home laptop, it just crashes. and crashes. and crashes…

weird, I’ve been using it at home for a while now and it’s never skipped a beat. Lots of iplayer type use too

Was Chrome for years but lots of crashes in the past few months I’ve gone back to Explorer 9 and like it where as before I hated it. I’m really liking Explorer 10 on Windows 8 but too earlier to comment on reliability

Chrome mainly, Firefox occasionally.

Chrome all the time. Never really have a problem, but if something gets sluggish I might close some tabs and relaunch.

I like my bookmarks & pre-fills being available across all my machines.

Interesting thoughts just to use ie9… Might give it a try for a while!

Look at your task manager when chrome has been running for a while, apparently the multiple instances dint really help performance

Used to be a big Chrome fan but it does seem to crash more of late and I seem to get a fair amount of disk churning when using it. Liking IE9 and FF for the moment

I tend to use Firefox and Chrome at the same time. The former for work stuff and the latter for non work browsing. Probably really sub-optimal but it suits my way of working/shirking

Chrome on my work windows machine, never had any problems with it. Firefox is pretty good too. Safari is my most common browser as I’m iPhone / iPad / Mac Mini for all personal stuff

chome usually, was forced back onto firefox though, still on os x 10.5 the now, and a month ago chrome started getting an irritating flash out of date message that you can’t get rid of. so back on firefox. prefer chrome mind and use that were available at work.

Safari

Was a Chrome convert.. the I installed Win8 yesterday and have been very impressed with IE9 – seems very quick and most unlike the IE of old… haven’t felt the need to return to Chrome yet..

I installed Win8 yesterday and have been very impressed with IE9

If you installed Win 8 you’re probably impressed with IE10. As am I, finding it better than the latest Firefox. Never really got on with Chrome.

Chrome here, suffered the similar crashes with some sites but the move to HTML5 is solving most. I find it light and simple and the shared account stuff is great use it on the phone too.

Well I’ve been using ie9 for a little bit this afternoon, and am gonna stick with it a while – nice and fast. Seems much improved on previous versions I’ve used. Also glad its nit just me with the chrome issues either!

Firefox for me, does exactly what I want. Dabbled with Chrome but really couldn’t get on with it, just felt very counterintuitive in some ways and the benefits didn’t seem worth figuring it out.

Still using IE7 at work, which is alright. Not sure why it’s so hated tbh. Wouldn’t choose it, but it works.

Mainly Safari at home, but have dabbled with Flock, icab & Camino.
Iron or Safari on the work pc.

IE9 for me. oddly enough, it just works.

I don’t think there’s all that much practical difference between them these days.

I use Firefox, without Flash installed. With Flash I found Firefox to be badly unstable, it’s been solid since I removed it. Plus it safeguards against malicious code. I switch to IE for work systems (because they’re Microsofty and don’t play well with others) and for anything that needs Flash. The sooner Flash is properly dead the better, IMHO.

FF and Chrome seem to be largely interchangeable; I don’t use Chrome mostly because I’ve not really seen any need to switch to it rather than there being anything inherently wrong with it.

Chrome…

Your crashes may be because flash player runs inside chrome… i.e. you don’t need flash player installed on your PC as it is already with chrome… Since removing this, mine has worked faultlessly.

Also, download the beta version. I found the ‘actual’ version a tad unstable.

Agreed on Chrome Flash player being the source of most Chrome crashes. Any crashes I have looked at on friend’s PCs are due to both internal and external Flash players being installed.

Opening chrome://plugins/ then disabling any ‘extra’ versions of Flash has always resolved the issue. It’s best to uninstall Flash from the system if you are only using Chrome, as Flash is built-in to it these days.

For my Android phone I use Dolphin, I had a cheapy Chinese Cube and the normal browsers were dreadful on that, some one on here recommended Dolphin I downloaded it and found it to be damm good, much better than Chrome on my Android devices.

IE9 on windows 7 and Safari on my Ipad. Ive never really felt the need to try an alternative as each manufacturers proprietary package seems to work perfectly well. Apart from the lack of flash on the ipad of course but thats another matter that still boils my piss.

What are the advantages of firefox and chrome? Is there a real great tangable difference or is just the odd minour idiosyncrasies that set them apart.

Arguably faster and more secure. The nice thing is, you can install multiple browsers and try them all, see if you prefer them or not.

Firefox. Almost instant with the fibre optic Net connection and rarely crashes. The only minor niggle is that some AVG features don’t work in the latest version.

Well, so far so good for IE9 – I’m really liking it. Fast and a nice clean interface. I also like the ability to clear all browsing data on exit which Chrome still doesn’t seem to have.

been pissing about with browsers today and although Chrome doesn’t crash for me, You Tube and Vimeo playback is awful, laggy and unwilling to download. You have to watch the video all the way through and it jumps and pauses really badly, fine on second playback

Trying out Firefox for a while

Apart from the lack of flash on the ipad of course but thats another matter that still boils my piss.

Missed the bits in the other posts pointing out that its Flash causing crash problems, did you?
A plague of boils on the ass of Flash. It’s final demise cannot come soon enough.

Missed the bits in the other posts pointing out that its Flash causing crash problems, did you?
A plague of boils on the ass of Flash. It’s final demise cannot come soon enough.

Nope, I cought them, just never had that problem EVER. It’s still no excuse to deny all apple customers at least the option to try it. Twunts