The bottom line: Extensions, highly competitive
page-load times, cutting edge features, and strong support for "future
Web” technologies make Opera 11 one of the best browsers available.
Review:
The second-oldest browser currently in use, Opera debuted way back in
1995 and has recently undergone a major overhaul. No longer the quirky
choice of enthusiasts, Opera has developed into a robust, full-featured
suite of browsing tools.
Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, a
customizable search bar, advanced bookmarking tools, and simple
integration with e-mail and chat clients. Mouse-gesture support,
keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop functionality round out the
essentials.
No longer a fledgling upstart, Firefox is the gold standard of
alternatives to the still-dominant Internet Explorer. Firefox 3.6 is
full-featured, lightning fast, and secure. Its killer selection of
add-ons remains strong, with built-in support for the next generation
of themes, called Personas, plus the latest update makes version 3.6
about 20 percent faster than version 3.5. However, competition is
strong and it can no longer be said that Firefox is the fastest browser
available.
Internet Explorer 8 addresses just about all of the major concerns
that users and critics have had with the world’s most used browser.
Whether they get answered in a way you like is another matter.
There are several new and interesting features. Web Slices lets you
save predefined sections of a Web page for at-a-glance viewing. Instead
of going to a traffic Web site for updates, the latest commuting news
comes to you. Similarly, Accelerators make repetitive tasks one-click
behaviors, for instance finding directions or blogging. InPrivate
browsing introduces a cache and history on-off switch, while related
tabs are color-coded and automatically reorganized as you open them.
There’s also tab sandboxing, which means that when a tab crashes, IE
itself won’t, and it even tries to resurrect the page that crashed.
The bottom line: Google Chrome 10 comes with a full
range of competitive features, and is among the most
standards-compliant and fastest browsers available. It lacks some of
the fine-tuning customizations in Firefox, but Chrome’s minimalist
interface, fast page-load times, and support for extensions make the
browser appealing to the average user as well as to Google fanatics.
Review:
Google Chrome continues to mature from a lightweight and fast browsing
alternative into an innovative browser that’s also on the precipice of a
potential browsing revolution with the pending Chrome OS. The
browser that people can use today, Chrome 10, offers highly
competitive features including synchronization, autofill, and standards
compliance, and maintains Google’s reputation for building one of the
fastest browsers available.
The previous version of Safari for Windows dramatically changed the
nature of the browser from something of an unfinished curiosity to an
alternative with seriously quick chops. It lacked many of the
customization features that define most other browsers, but certain
unique default features, such as the visually impressive, Cover
Flow-inspired Top Sites and history viewing, made it worth checking out
for more users besides just browser enthusiasts and jaded reviewers.
The latest iteration of Windows Media Player adds a lot of useful
bells and whistles, succeeding in many ways as a competitor to iTunes
for Windows. A tree-style file directory makes it easy to find the music
you want quickly, and a simple search box gets you where you want to
go immediately. A five-star rating system lets you rate your music,
then organize it by rating, so it’s easy to group your favorite songs.
Drag-and-drop functionality and a handy Create Playlist button take
any confusion out of the process of making your own playlists.
Creating the perfect mix CD is equally as easy–simply drag and drop
songs into a Burn List in the right panel, then click Start Burn to
finish. Ripping was reasonably fast on our test machine, and the
program let us pick our preferred bit rate and audio file type.
WinAmp 5.3 took some long-needed steps to improve the old-school
media player, with support for AAC encoding, CD burning, and a robust
file-management system. WinAmp 5.56 ups the ante with strong support for
portable devices, including iPods, the ability to sync non-DRMed
files to your PC from your device, an optional new interface layout
and a built-in browser for media discovery.
These days, a great number of people are not only finding the
majority of their entertainment online but are also conducting a fair
amount of their social lives there as well. In such times, it’s great to
have a quick and simple tool for downloading, editing, sharing, and
transferring media. RealPlayer for Windows already had most of that
down, offering a sweeping array of features, from one-click video
downloading to automatic transcoding to social network sharing. The
latest offering focuses mainly on improved device integration and an
even smoother user experience.
After 10 years and with millions of users worldwide, Apple’s
QuickTime player still provides one of the best solutions for digital
media. Whether you’re watching streaming movie trailers online or diving
headlong into QuickTime as a creation platform, you’ll find little to
quibble about in this veteran player.