Logban disagrees with this, insofar as it is concerned with itself.

You comment that IE8 was slightly faster than FF, but you don't mention which version of FF you were using.

The article is talking about the currently-RC-status 3.5. Were you, by chance, using FF2 or earlier to compare? Earlier versions of Firefox have known issues with memory leaks. Many of these, though not all, have been fixed in the 3.5 version.

If you're going to say that "IE8 is slightly faster than FF" and that it is significantly better on older machines, you really ought to have said which version of Firefox you were using.

Of course, this goes both ways. Saying Firefox 3.5 is lightyears ahead of IE, without mentioning which IE it was being compared with, is utterly useless. Yes, Firefox 3.5 is lightyears ahead of IE5, 5.5, 6, or earlier versions (if they even still exist), but not so much when compared to 7 or 8.

Anecdotal evidence really does need versions along with it to at least look intelligent.

Honestly, we've been having "Google Killers," "Microsoft Killers," "Amazon Killers" and all of their kin-killers for so long now, that I'm surprised news sites aren't completely jaded.

I've been hearing about Wolfram Alpha for about a week now, and it is always the same thing: New site that may give Google a run for its money.

The same was said for... who was it? I can't remember. Let me go Google it.

Oh, that's right: Cuil. I don't have the desire to dredge the graves of all the other "killer" products.

What is with people tossing out all of these "killer" products? If your product is so great, it will generate its own power. When something is put forward so much, proclaimed as a "killer" product, people tend to yawn.

Put the product in the market, and come back in a year before it is so heavily trumpeted. Anything that is unreleased or in limited release that is touted as a "killer" product sounds questionable, at best, especially when the general public has not even heard of it yet. You know, the general public who gives a product its critical mass?

Yeah. When said critical mass is around, then you can call it a killer. Until then, the river flows on.

It's open-source. Unless you are talking about literal documentation, it is sort of difficult to have anything "undocumented."

That comment of yours is severely over-rated.

Yup, speed is everything, all right. Especially when almost all of the instances are less than a second apart. Many are even withing a half second of each other.

I just finished a few of my own (very unscientific) tests, and in all but Adobe and 163, the pages was loaded before I got my mouse from the address bar to the scroller.

Granted, my system isn't exactly "low-end," but it isn't new, either. It is almost three years old, and was fairly high-end when I built it.

Still, looking only at the times MS has, I don't get why they are trumpeting differences that are negligible, at best.

No, wait, let me correct myself.

Looking only at the times that these speed tests that companies are so fond of put out, I don't get why ANYBODY bothers to trumpet differences that are negligible, at best.

Sadly, the lay-man will likely look at these numbers and think they actually mean something.

Anyway, if speed is desired, go with Opera. If Opera were open-source and had viable StumbleUpon support, it would be the perfect browser.

Honestly, this sounds suspect, at best. I can think of numerous reasons why asthma would appear more common in people who watched TV more, including one much more likely "death spiral":

A person who will have asthma likely has it to lesser degrees when they are younger. This makes it more difficult to go out and do activities that would require the body to breath harder.

In turn, this causes said people to find other tasks to occupy their time, of which TV is a very easy solution.

Of course, the more TV you watch, and the less physical activity you have, the worst shape your body will be in. If you are not physically capable of doing active activities (taking asthma out of the equation for the moment) then you are less likely to do said activities.

Again, you then seek other ways to occupy your time, and the cycle repeats.

I could just as easily say that TV is liked with lower IQ (ignoring the fantasy that IQ is) and show a very strong link with it. However, watching TV does not lower a person's intelligence, it just makes them less likely to increase it. Of course, accessibility to learning materials is far more important, so any would-be jokers who want to comment about this being the reason Africa is the leading scientific nation need not respond.

Also, preemptive "Why so serious?"

Anybody who designs a website with a main menu that is a drop-down, instead of making the links readily available, cannot be trusted with working on something as complex as a browser.

Without Linux and its kin (BSD and, especially, UNIX), the Internet would be a mere shadow of what it currently is, IF it would even exist at all.

All this talk I always hear about the fabled "Year of Linux" always fails to mention the little fact that, without Linux and Open-Source technology, a lot of the tech we have today would not exist or would be prohibitively expensive.

So enough of this sensationalist hype, OK? The Year of Linux came when the Internet took off, and we've been living in the Year (or years) of Linux ever since. When Microsoft and Apple can compete with the Internet, then it will be their year. Until then, let them play catch-up.