Observations on Google Chrome Browser

Updated Oct 20.
Last week I installed Google Chrome on my office laptop to get a look at how it performs vs. some of the other browsers I've used. This is a Lenovo Thinkpad machine, running Windows XP, 2.53 GHz processor, 3 GB of RAM. So far, I've been pretty impressed with it vs. IE 7. I don't have Firefox installed on this machine but do on my home machine. I expect Chrome to be similar to, if not a bit better, than Firefox but will check it on this same machine shortly.

Installation:
The only issue I had during install was an issue with my firewall. Once I disabled that, the download and installation went smoothly. I have to look further at the firewall issue later as well as try it on another machine. {When I installed on a second machine had no firewall issue. Conclude it was a firewall config issue on first machine] All my IE favorites and settings were automatically carried over. That included my Corp. proxy settings, security certificates, etc. It also included saved passwords which may sound good but it's really not.

Security:
From what I can tell you can keep Chrome pretty safe but you need to take steps to do so. I advise that you turn off the option to save/remember passwords and form data from the settings/options/personal_stuff menu. If you don't do this your passwords are easily viewed by anyone that has access to your computer. This includes passwords saved from your "old" browser. Look under settings/options/personal_stuff and you'll see a "show saved passwords" tab. Not good so don't save any.

Performance:
In direct comparison to IE 7 on this machine Chrome is noticeably faster in start-up, and running Java script, and page loading in general. It has never crashed or hung no matter what content, inside or outside my firewall, I have accessed. I've seen people tweet about crashes but I have never experienced any.

There is one exception to smoothly accessing all the content I did with IE 7. An internal web site I need for financial reporting requires the use of an older Microsoft JVM. With IE 7 I was able to configure use of this old JVM. Later I found some other web site apps that I visit/use that do not work properly. These same sites have issues with newer than IE6 as well. Looks like I need to keep IE around to access these legacy apps until they are upgraded.

Minor annoyance:
One function which I uesed frequently and miss in Chrome is the "email a link" option. IE and FF both support that and Chrome doesn't. It's a minor annoyance as you can of course copy and paste the link into your email client but it does appear to be an obvious ommission. I did get a tip on how to do this but it's still not as smooth as IE and FF.

Rumor:
I've seen some complaint about compatibility between Chrome and other Google products (Wave I think). I can't verify that since I don't have a Wave invite. If you read this and have direct feedback on this I'd approeciate it.

On a side note, I'd really like a Google Wave invite. I have strong interest in better collaboration and converged communications and want to see for myself how much Google has attacked this problem, or not.

Comments? Please leave your Chrome experiences, suggestions. Thanks