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'Chrome'atic life

I personally own a laptop and a desktop. The desktop is a windows machine and the laptop is a Ubuntu machine. A tried to keep the desktop as closely rooted to Microsoft as possible while the laptop is everything that is free in this world. But thanks to Shveta's increasing inclination and familiarity to Google Chrome (the browser thingy), this browser found it's way to both the machines.
Let me admit it at the onset, that it is one hack of an application. Kickass is the word! It can most efficiently take care of all your entertainment, information and communication needs. YOU DON'T NEED NO OTHER THING. Period.
But as the usage increased over time, I found my desktop getting slower. It took a lot of time to open applications other than Chrome. A coffee time conversation with friends, little Googling (ironic!) and some deep diving revealed that the culprit was Chrome itself. The browser is very much hungry - both for processor and  memory. Hence, the desktop lost it's chrome as it had more ulterior tasks to do - like Photoshop, NFS etc. :-)
The laptop however retains it's chrome, an old version I gather - some 9.x me thinks. While, I type this post from my mother's laptop (a Windows 7 machine that is light years ahead of my laptop in hardware sizing), I realize it has a more recent version of Chrome - some 16.x. And it has something they call Chrome Web store. This store has hordes of things. Little web applications in various categories like education, games, shopping, entertainment etc. I tried my hand at a couple of things and I immediately realised what this is - a computer on a computer. All those things that you earlier installed on your machine are now a part of the browser. So Google has the rendering services, the storage on the cloud and now even the last mile - the applications.
This makes the other desktop applications redundant. They simply eat into your hardware. While chrome, on the other hand, starts bulging like a Hulk with every new app you install on it. Both put together substantially reduce thee performance of your machine and you begin to wonder why.
In my opinion, the best way to circumvent this is by uninstalling all your desktop applications. Have only the bare minimums and use Chrome for the rest of the stuff. I think I will try this out on my desktop soon. Keep watching this space for the results!
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Location: National Highway 4A, Mangaddo, Goa, India

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