Giving Edge Another Chance

With the release of the Anniversary Update (AU) for Windows 10, Microsoft is introducing new features such as improved inking support, refining the Start menu and Edge is receiving a large update as well. After each major release - the initial Windows 10 launch and the 1511 update - I have tried to use Edge as my primary browser, but each time I eventually switched back to Chrome as my daily browser.

Why did I abandon Edge before? Primarily, Edge would crash frequently, resulting in lost work that would slow down my productivity. There were other minor annoyances like passwords not syncing and no extension support was frustrating, but I could live without them if the browser bested Chrome in speed and/or resource allocation.

Unfortunately, Edge failed to live up to its initial promises. I, like many others, moved to back Chrome. Now that Edge has received another large update with the release of 1607, it’s time to revisit Microsoft’s browser to see if it is capable of living up to the browsers from Google and Mozilla.

My test for Edge is grueling - it needs to simply work - that’s it. If Edge gets in the way and causes me to launch Chrome or Firefox to complete a task, then it has failed. What would cause this to happen? Not rendering a page correctly, crashing and causing me to lose work, being slow or unresponsive and LastPass not working. I need this basic functionality to work every day.

Starting on August 2, I switched to Edge full time and immediately I had a hiccup. The LastPass extension, while it did install, was not working. After I uninstalled and reininstalled the extension, it worked as expected and this resolved one of my prior pain points with Edge; password sync.

LastPass, once working, was functioning perfectly and made the browsing experience much better as all my login information traveled with me to every machine and device that I own. Aside from the LastPass problem, one of the other issues I encountered is that I was not able to close Edge  and occasionally, favicons do not show up. But when discussing Edge on Twitter with Mary Jo Foley and Aidan Finn, it became clear that there are still larger, underlying issues, for some users.

Performance when browsing the web is inconsistent across devices and even among users of the same page. While I have had a more positive experience with 1607 when compared to update 1511, it's still not perfect. Tweetdeck text input lags after a tab has been open for a few hours and scrolling can stutter from time to time on other pages. It's clear by seeing responses from others on Twitter that these performance issues are not isolated and that Edge still needs refinement under the hood.

Even with these issues, Edge still works well most of the time, but the reality is that while Edge is good, why would you switch from Chrome to Edge? The Cortana integration and web notes are nice little features, but for me, I rarely use them on the desktop, and I'd pre...