Wow! It’s been quite some time since I last updated my site. Rest assured, I will be

adding a few new items in my product lineup in the next few days. Watch out for it!

Regards,
Waycool

After the highly successful launch of the DFI LAN Party JR P45-T2RS mATX Motherboard, DFI now launches the DFI LAN Party JR 790GX-M2RS mATX Motherboard.

Let’s unbox it and see what’s inside:

Just like the unboxing of the DFI JR P45 last time, it’s the same white box inside:

Here we see the contents besides the motherboard itself (manuals, drivers, Uv reactive cables, backplate, etc):

Teaser shot with the motherboard still in its static bag:

And finally, the motherboard itself:

DFI seems to be on a roll nowadays. They are able to release new products faster.

The past few years they have been lagging behind. If they continue to keep this up, they could probably match or exceed the glory days of the nF4 models. Still remember them? nF4 Ultra-D / SLI-DR ring a bell? Oh I bet you do!

Introduction

Quick question: At the top of your head, which companies/software do you think of when I say browser?

Likely Answers: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera and ….. Google Chrome (eh???)

Yes everyone, Google has now entered the browser market arena. This comes just days after having received news that Mozilla agreed to a 3 year search deal extension with Google. I’m a Mozilla Firefox user myself and think this move by Google into the browser market would provide a negative effect for Mozilla. With Mozilla munching away (no pun intended) at Internet Explorer’s market share, here comes a giant looking looking to take away a piece of the browser market share. But hey, let’s not delve into that and see what this browser can do shall we?

Disclaimer: The author only presents only his own personal end user views and not as an expert (nor he claims to be one) of the field.

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Installation

* You can download Google Chrome here

* The installation is pretty much straightforward:

*Read the TOS.

* It detects I’m using Firefox

* Download would largely depend how fast your internet connection is (took a while on mine):

* I suggest to customize your settings first:

* Customize your settings:

* And we’re done!

Wait a minute!!! Something’s bothering me here. Installation was waaaay too fast. Oh I know!

How come it did not ask me where to install the program? Where did it install? Did I miss something? I think not. Investigate we shall.

Found the installation here:
C:\Documents and Settings\”Your ID”\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome

I don’t know about you guys but when I install a browser (or any program for that matter), I would create a folder and install it like this:
C:\Browser\-insert browser name-\

Aside from that, everything else is okay.

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Interface & Design

Chrome’s simple and clean look will appeal to users who just wants a browser that just… works. Nothing special and nothing fancy here.

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Features

One Box For Everything Concept

Address bar? Search box? Intuitive autocomplete suggestion? Web history? It’s an all in one rectangular box!

Most Visited Tab

I really like this feature. Opening a new tab shows your most visited sites. Just click on the thumbnails to go to the site.

Dynamic Tabs

The tabs are can be dragged to create a new window. Want to return it into a tab again instead of a window? Just drag it back!

Task Manager

Ending a tab is easy with the Task Manager. That way, if one tab crashes. the other tabs does not close.

Incognito

Surf the web without leaving any traces by going into Incognito mode.

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Performance

Speed:
Page load times were quite fast. No complaints here. Even if I opened multiple sites simultaneously, it pretty much loaded everything.

Rendering:
One of the most important function of a web browser is it’s ability to render web pages correctly (even if it’s badly coded). For this test, I opened up sites that I visit frequently plus I did my Entgrecard run (that’s visiting around 300 web / blog sites) on this browser. It did not disappoint. For a beta browser, it pretty much rendered all the sites that I visited. I counted around 2 sites that did not render correctly. That’s about it. Google pretty much did a good job here.

Memory:
For the memory test, I compared Google Chrome with Mozilla Firefox 3. I loaded up 10 identical sites that I regularly visit on each browser and the results are surprising to say the least.:

I expected Google Chrome to eat up less memory but the results from the Windows Task Manager shows otherwise. Chrome shows 12 running processes instead of Firefox’s 1! Add them all up and it’s memory usage is higher than Mozilla’s! Disappointing.

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Conclusion

Will Chrome replace Firefox as my default web browser? No. I will continue to use Firefox as my main browser and Chrome as my alternate for me to play with. Although Chrome has some pretty nifty features, there’s really nothing compelling that would make me switch. It holds a lot of promise though considering it’s still in beta.  They say first impression is last impression and in this case it leaves a pretty positive impression. A little rough around the edges but the potential to become great is there.

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Wrap Up

What I liked:
* Simple and clean interface
* Easy to use
* Pages load fast
* Almost all of the pages rendered correctly
* Very nice feature set

What I didn’t like:
* Terms of Agreement
* Did not ask where it should be installed
* Opening a new site in a new tab via right click sometimes takes more than one click (I do not have this problem in Firefox)
* Memory hog
* Runs multiple processes instead of only one according to Windows Task Manager

The actual box pictured:

Opening the box pictured above reveals another (much simpler) box:

Opening the box, we see the bundle (manuals, drivers, UV reactive orange cables, etc..)

Tease… tease… tease… here’s a shot of the motherboard still in the static bag:

And finally…

That’s about it. Hope you enjoyed the unboxing as much as I did. This is probably one of the first (if not the first) actual retail stock of the DFI LAN Party JR P45-T2RS mATX motherboard pictured.

It should be available worldwide and in your country real soon.

Bu the way, here’s a bonus shot with the room lights turned off and illuminated with a Sunbeam 12″ Dual UV CCFL kit:

Pretty cool eh?

Click image to enlarge:

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