For years I have been a diehard fan of Firefox as my browser, but lately between numerous updates and generally crashing once every few days I’m done with it.  I have been flirting with the idea of moving to Chrome for awhile but I just couldn’t be bothered finding all the little things that I use in Firefox and my password manager didn’t have an extension for Chrome, which was a huge deal breaker because really I cant be expected to remember all my passwords between clients, work, and personal sites.

Then I saw a tweet by SEO journalist Danny Sullivan talking about his first day experience with the new Chrome OS.  It’s a great read and one of the things that was referenced in the article was a password manager called LastPass.  It got me thinking that I could now start using Chrome more and not have to remember passwords.  Also I have applied for the Google OS pilot program for Zacuto as I have a few users that could benefit from that kind of machine, so I figured I need to get comfortable with Chrome in case I do get selected.

So I sat down to install Chrome and get my customizations in place to make it workable.  I want to do a real go at switching which means I don’t want to be switching back and forth to do different things.  After some searches I found extensions and web apps that will cover all the things I need taken care of in my day to day work.  I lost one toolbar from Raventools.com, but I can still do all my work from within the site so it wasn’t a deal breaker though it was close.  Ill petition the Raven guys for a chrome extension, they are pretty good about working on requests if enough interest is generated.  (Sidenote: If you work with Internet Marketing check out Raventools.com, amazing reporting/monitoring tools.)

I also am taking this opportunity to test Springpad as I have been trying to find a good to do/task app that works across all my platforms, as I recently traded in my iPhone for a EVO with Android.  It looks pretty good so far but only time will tell how I interact with it.

If you have been waiting until Chrome is more “mature” to start working with it, I believe that time is here.  With Chrome OS coming its important that if you do any kind of tech support work your going to see it, so you might as well start getting into it.  I’ll update in a few weeks to discuss how the switch is going, good luck with yours!