Ok, I did a quick JavaScript speed test (using the Slickspeed test from MooTools) of various browsers after getting Google Chrome today.
Here are the results:
| Browser | Time Taken |
|---|---|
| Opera 9.50 | 122.2 ms |
| Safari 3.1.2 | 127.4 ms |
| Google Chrome 0.2.149.27 | 185.8 ms |
| Firefox 3.0.1 | 188.4 ms |
| Internet Explorer 7 | ...yawn 1238 ms |
(Cumulative test times, averaged out)
Yes, IE7 is really more than 10 times slower than Opera at running the same set of JavaScript tests.
In other news, it appears Ben may be right to be an Opera fanboy, at least when it comes to running JavaScript. ;-)
Tests were run on Windows XP, Intel Core 2 1.86GHz, 2GB of RAM.