A few days ago there were some questions about what browser is best to use. A lot of it comes down to personal pretences, but there are a couple of different ones that you might want to download and install. And what is good about them is that they are all free.

Just as some background, here is the breakdown of the browsers being used on the blog.

Blue - Internet Explorer, Green - Firefox, Orange - Safari, Yellow - Chrome

First we have the breakdown since I started to capture the stats using Google Analytics.

And here is the last month.

Most people are still using Internet Explorer (IE), but the percentage is coming down all the time as people move away from IE.

To be honest I think everyone should ditch IE and run a better browser. IE is slow and clunky, and is also somewhat insecure.

There are really three options out there (and I will concentrate on Windows machines here), which are:

• Firefox
• Chrome
• Safari

One of the best reasons for moving away from IE (especially the older versions) is that the new browsers support tabs. This allows you to have multiple web pages open in the one browser. For example, you could have a news website, the blogocrats and your email site open in the one window, and then you can just switch between them with ease as the browsers have a simple short cut. I have to use IE6 at work and it pains me to have a separate window open for each web page that I am viewing.

Firefox

This is an open source browser that can be downloaded from here. It is a very stable and quick browser. One of the advantages of Firefox is that you can customise it by installing add-ons. There are add-ons to change how the browser looks, how it handles alerts, language support - as well as plug ins for things like flash, Java etc.

Chrome

This is Googles entry to the browser market and can be downloaded from here. Again it is much faster than IE, but it is a beta version and so can be a bit unstable. It does not have the rich variety of add-ons, as it comes mostly complete out of the box. The interface is very clean and simple.

Safari

This is Apples native browser, but there is now a Windows version (download from here). It is supposedly the quickest browser available. I use the Mac version as my base browser but have not tried the Windows version.

There are other browsers out there, but they are the main three that compete with IE. I'd recommend that you download them and see which one you prefer. As I say, I mainly use Safari, but I also have Firefox and Chrome installed as sometimes I need to check how the blog looks in different browsers. For windows I'd probably suggest that you use Firefox.

It'd be good if we were able to see the statistics change, and to have IE drop down the list of browsers being used to access the blogocrats.

Earlier this week I received a DHL delivery from the US that had me nearly peeing my pants with excitement. My new techie toy had arrived, my very own T.O.O.L. (Techie Object Of Lust). My new 64Gb iPad.

Upon opening the box, which is always an adventure for an Apple product, my first impression was that the iPad was smaller than expected and heavier. But after a while the weight and size seem just right.

The first task is to sync the iPad with iTunes. I sync'ed my full music library and a couple of movies/tv-shows - 20Gb eaten straight away.

The basic apps are very intuitive and the touch experience is really cool (continued after jump).