Anyway, there are a growing number of people hitting this website looking for information on “Izarc Newton”. First off, you really need to check the spelling of his name!

You will arrive on this site due to the fact I have previously reviewed “Izarc”, a compression utility similar to WinZip. This, added to my surname, gives you a broad match in Google.

If you ended up here looking for Great Uncle Isaac, please have a look at the Wiki. If you were looking for me……Hello!

DO. NOT. WANT.

Windows suddenly seemed clunky, slow and…wrong. Just plain wrong. And the funny thing is, I’d gradually configured my Gnome desktop to look like Win7 – large transparent bar at the bottom with big icons, clock bottom right etc. Used Compiz for some flashy effects (wobbly windows and so on), but that wasn’t it – it was just the feel of the OS.

I used Chrome in both operating systems, and the only real difference is the font used on the bookmark bar (yeah, Mr Google, when is that bar going to reflect the DPI settings in Gnome? Eh? Eh?) which has zero impact on usability. Unless you have a tiny screen, of course.

I managed about half an hour and then had to go back to Ubuntu for the sake of my sanity. Is Linux really this addictive? I always managed to kick the habit before, and I’ve been playing with it since at least 1996!

Should I get excited with the next release due soon?

Google’s alledged accidental launch of the new webkit-based browser has all the hallmarks of guerilla marketing, but let’s not hold that against it. I downloaded Chrome on it’s day of release, installed it and was thoroughly non-plussed. Nothing much I hadn’t seen before – pretty, granted, but that was about it.

However, after a week or two of playing with Chrome, it does seem to start up faster than virtually any other browser, renders pages quickly and works well on widescreen displays – you don’t feel so height-constrained as very little screen real estate is stolen by menu bars, address bars and the like.

It’s compatibility with plugins such as Shockwave is great, and the ‘incognito’ mode is great for logging in to two Google accounts at once. Running each page as a seperate process is also kinda cool – meaning that if one page dies, the whole browser (or OS in the case of IE) isn’t taken down with it!

Biggest issue as far as I can see is the lack of Firefox-style plugin support – specifically for ad blocking and bookmark sync. As a confirmed del.icio.us and Foxmarks junkie, THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! OK, maybe not – but support for Google Bookmarks is rumoured for the next iteration.

Get it here : http://www.google.com/chrome

It all came rapidly back to me this week as I tried out ‘mobile broadband’, via a Three USB modem. It’s exactly like dial-up, but faster!

It does sometimes drop the connection (especially during thunderstorms), and doesn’t seem anywhere near as reliable as a wired connection. But it’s still pretty impressive. Look ma, it’s tha intertubes with no wires!

So, in an effort to get a little more stability and speed from the dongle, I started looking at the web accelerators and proxies available today. AllegroSurf is still around – I remember that from when Win2K was in beta! Still looks the same, is still a solid app, still costs money. Well that rules that one out then! It does have useful features though – ad blocking and caching being amongst them.

The Google Web Accelerator was a bit of a no-go. It didn’t like my install of Firefox 3. Too bad – I do.

I half remembered something called “webalizer” or something like that – it had an interface a bit like Avast Antivirus, and did caching and prefetching – but it doesn’t seem to exist any more! Perhaps I’ve completely mis-remembered the name.

Best thing so far is a little Java app from toonel.net – it compresses data to and from toonel’s own web based proxy server. I’m averaging 40% compression both ways – sweet! Saves on the 5gb bandwidth allowance, and speeds up downloading too.

But still, does anyone know what happened to this ‘webalizer’ thing – or even what it was actually called?

It’s quite complex, but here goes:

Uninstall the Google toolbar.

No, that was it. Haven’t had a lock up in 36 hours since uninstalling the toolbar. Hope it works for you too!

Update : 64 hours and counting….