Edging Closer to Using Microsoft’s Web Browser (Premium)

One of the things I intended to do during my three-week home swap was spend time with several different alternative web browsers. So I loaded up my PCs with Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi, in addition to Edge, Chrome, and Firefox, with the intention of seeing how each compared.

In the course of configuring each of these browsers, I did what I could---the capabilities vary by browser---to import my master list of bookmarks, and where possible, passwords into each. The browsers are obviously similar in many respects. But each also offers some unique user experiences that triggered a rethinking about how I use PC-based web browsers.

(Tied to this, too, was a desire to ensure that I could sync my data between the PC and my phones, ideally by using the mobile versions of the same browsers. This was generally possible, and only Vivaldi doesn't provide a mobile version of its web browser.)

But then something interesting and unexpected happened. It occurred to me that letting go of some long-held habits---like using the Bookmarks Bar exclusively for bookmarks---would make for a more streamlined web browsing experience. And that, if I were going to do that, I should reevaluate Microsoft Edge. Which, I should do anyway, since it's being updated again with Windows 10 version 1809, which is nearing completion.

And switching to Edge isn't as ridiculous a prospect as it was even a year ago: In Windows 10 version 1803 (Redstone 4), especially, Microsoft finally began chipping away at my remaining complaints about its web browser. And now with version 1809, things are improved yet again.

Yes, it's cheap to say "this is the best version of Edge yet"---because of course it is---but this version may actually be good enough to use. That's a big deal.

To be clear, Microsoft has not addressed my key remaining complaint about Microsoft Edge. Which is that pinning a web page to the taskbar with Edge creates a shortcut, but later clicking that shortcut will open the page in an Edge tab, not in its own window. With Chrome, you can save shortcuts to the taskbar that look and work like standalone apps. I really like that.

To overcome this problem, I've experimented with a compromise: Instead of using Chrome-based shortcuts for Google Inbox, Google Calendar, and Twitter Lite, I'm using Store apps---Windows Mail, Calendar, and Twitter---instead. The only truly onerous app in this list is Mail, but it's not as horrible on a laptop display as it is on my much larger desktop PC. And I think I can make this work.

The advantage of accepting this compromise is that Edge consumes less system resources and impacts the battery less than does Chrome. This is particularly useful on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga I just reviewed, since it has only 8 GB of RAM. But this set up also lets me compare Edge side-to-side with the version on my Surface Book 2. That PC is running the Windows 10 Insider Preview, which includes the next, improved version of Microsoft Edge.
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