There are two very important things to keep in mind about these figures, however. First, they're incredibly preliminary; I doubt much (if any) work has been done to reduce Chromium's memory footprint. Second, the advantages of separate processes per tab or window are very real and tangible--the first time you don't lose all your open tabs to one bad JavaScript, you'll thank Chromium profusely. Final determinations on memory requirements will have to wait for the final version of the browser--but for now, if you're going to test Chromium, just be aware that it will take up lots of RAM each time you open a new tab or window.

With all the limitations on Chromium, you'd think I'd have tested the browser, then removed it as quickly as possible. But that's not the case. Despite the unfinished elements of the browser, the stuff that's there works really well, and there are some new ideas in how to handle certain routine browsing tasks.

Chromium features a fast start page, much like what you see in the or Firefox with the extension installed. In this case, Chromium shows the nine most-visited sites in your browsing history.

In addition, you can easily search your history, see recently-added bookmarks, and recently-closed pages. A Remove Thumbnails link makes it easy to remove some or all of the thumbnails on this start page.