Over the past few weeks I have gotten a couple of new computers.  I have an iMac at home, and at Clearspring I have a MacBookPro and the set up for the machines could not have been easier.  Years ago when I would get a new Windows machine and when I was writing AIM Windows or the core cross platform IM library, the level of pain to get the machine set up was unbearable.

The biggest change, beyond not having to install all the developer tools like Visual Studio and corporate tools like Microsoft Office, is that most of my tools are via the browser.  Now before this sounds like a complete infomercial for Google Chrome, know that this is more of a thank you note to the Chrome team.  Installing Chrome on each new machine all of my bookmarks and plugins easily synced.  Total set up time, 15 minutes…

While Xmarks and other tools could have solved this issue with Firefox and other browsers, it was painfree with Chrome.  Let’s not even get started with IE, which at both AOL and Clearspring we still see users with IE6.  In the case of Safari, one would think Apple could make this work via MobileMe, but how many people want to pay money each year for a feature that Google gives away free.