Yesterday's introduction of Chrome version 2.0.172.28 was touted by Google as being up to 30 percent faster for handling JavaScript. After using the update to the stable release extensively for the past day and running it through two JavaScript tests on two computers, it's conclusively faster than the previous stable version of Chrome. The latest Chrome developer preview, includes a significant new component to the V8 engine.

The Google Chrome team has announced a new version of the open-source browser, touting up to 30 percent performance increases on JavaScript-heavy tasks. I’ve taken it for a spin, comparing it to Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, which also has very fast JavaScript performance thanks to its TraceMonkey technology. The new version of Chrome does indeed work faster than the Firefox beta at this point, and the performance is another way that Google’s browser is maturing and innovating.

Google is putting its money where its mouth is on the performance increases in the new Chrome. If you go to this web page, it will automatically start running a series of seven separate JavaScript-centric browser benchmark tests. You can paste the same URL into Firefox or another browser, and compare the result to that of Chrome. I got significantly higher numbers (higher is better) on all the tests with the new version of Chrome, as compared to Firefox 3.5 Beta 4.

The performance increases in Chrome come from an update to its V8 JavaScript engine, as well as a new version of the open-source WebKit rendering engine. It’s worth noting that Firefox 3.5 will be coming out in a Release Candidate version in early June, with the final version due shortly after that. The final version may outperform Chrome in JavaScript tasks, as both Mozilla and Google are targeting improvements there. As far as the latest beta of Firefox goes, though, Chrome performs faster. It also continues to have the advantage of running tasks within tabs as separate applications, which means far fewer browser crashes. However, Chrome does not yet have anywhere near the ecosystem of useful extensions that Firefox has.

You can download the new version of Chrome here. If you’re already running Chrome, you’ll automatically be updated to the new version.

Actual results will vary based on your hardware and other program running simultaneously, but it's irrefutable that the new version of Chrome, with its updates to the WebKit rendering engine and Google's V8 JavaScript engine, is significantly faster than its predecessor.

Also new in this version of Chrome is the F11 hot key to toggle full screen mode, which drops all hints of the browser frame except for the scroll bars--but only if they're appearing on that site in standard mode. There's also a new form autofill under Options in the Tools menu, and users can selectively remove thumbnails from the New Tab landing page.

Back up offline POP3 email archives to an online email service is fairly easy when you're using Outlook Express. First you will need an Hotmail account, if you don't yet have one, sign up for free. After that download and use Windows Live Mail to use with that Hotmail account. This process is complete straight forward.

Windows Live Mail connects to your Hotmail account via synchronization, which means all the emails you have downloaded to your computer will remain at Hotmail server and available for you to view using a Web browser. Apart from email accounts that end with hotmail.com and live.com, Windows Mail Live can also handle other types of accounts including POP3. When you have multiple email account with Windows Mail Live, each account will have its own separate set of "Inbox", "Sent Items", "Draft" etc.

Say if you want to upload an existing Outlook Express email archive to your Hotmail account, first run Windows Live Mail then import Outlook Express messages. (To do this just press Alt+F then choose "Import" on the menu). Once the import process is done, create a new folder within your Hotmail account and name it, say, "POP3 Backup". You can create different folders for different group of of emails. After that you can drag and drop or copy messages from the POP3 imported account into these new folders.

Now all you need to do is sync the Hotmail account and voila! You will see those added folders and email you've just dragged over on the Hotmail server. This means you can access them whenever you are via a browser and they are now saved in Hotmail server. The sync process can take a long time if you have a big POP3 archive, and course you can't sync any archive bigger than the space allowed by Hotmail, which is 5GB. Once you have gotten those emails up to a Hotmail account, you can always import them into Gmail by using the new migration tool.

Google Docs has been around since 2006, offering a powerful and free alternative to Microsoft’s dominant productivity suite. But for many people, it remains something of a novelty - it’s there, but they don’t use it regularly. This is in part because of the inherent security issues with Cloud-based services, which make businesses hesitant to upload their confidential files.

OffiSync, a new plugin for Microsoft Office, is looking to change that. The application, which supports Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents, is launching in a private beta (you can request an invite from its homepage), with support for Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows. Mac users are out of luck for the time being. Alongside basic file syncing, OffiSync also integrates a number of features from Google Docs to actually improve Office. One of these is integrated Google search, which allows you to search through all of your Google Docs files directly from your Office toolbar.

The service also has support for Google Docs collaboration, though it isn’t as complete as I’d like. Using OffiSync, multiple people can edit the same file without having to worry about overwriting each other’s changes. But if you want to see real-time edits (which is one of the more powerful features of Google Docs), you’ll have to use the browser-based interface. Founder Oudi Antebi says that real time edits are in the works, and will be included in an update over the summer.

Napster unveiled a redesigned music service Monday, post Best Buy-acquisition, with a new subscription offering that may raise a few eyebrows.

For $5 per month, users can download and keep any five DRM-free MP3 tracks from Napster's catalog of more than seven million songs. So far, no big deal; that's the same as what Apple charges for many DRM-free AAC files, and slightly more than many singles from Amazon MP3. It's also reminiscent of eMusic's monthly MP3 download service. But here's where it gets interesting: as part of that fee, you also get unlimited streaming of all seven million tracks, for listening as often as you like.

There are a few strings attached that Napster isn't calling attention to: namely, that those tracks are DRM'ed unlike the MP3 downloads, and that you can only listen to those tracks on your desktop PC. You can't move them to a portable device (a la Napster To Go, which is still available and which costs more, or Napster Mobile--although you may want to skip that last one, given our experience with it).

Essentially, Napster is throwing in unlimited full song previews instead of 30-second clips. That even exceeds Lala's 10-cent-per-song offering for desktop PCs as well (which lets you listen to any song once, but then pay 10 cents and get unlimited listening). Napster is also offering more than 60 commercial-free radio stations, 1,400 programmed theme-based playlists, and an automix "seed" feature that creates a custom, Internet radio-style channel.

Spotify, already the best music app on the planet, is coming to a device near you. We’re talking XBoxes, PlayStations, Slingbox, mobile phones, networked audio players, SlimDevices — any place developers want to put it.

The release Tuesday night of libspotify, the company’s Application Programming Interface, means that the sky is the limit: Any developer (for approved devices) can build apps that access Spotify’s massive music catalog and use its P2P architecture, which streams Ogg Vorbis files between users like a streaming version of BitTorrent.

The bad news: It’s still not legally available in the United States and lots of other places, though there are ways to fake being in another country. In fact, this is great news at the moment only for music lovers in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. But those who have tried Spotify know it’s like a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world — and it’s free to use if you can put up with a 20-second ad every half an hour.

"With the release of libspotify, we hope to empower our users to build upon what we’ve started and come up with imaginative and innovative new ways of interacting with Spotify," reads the blog post announcing the program. "There are hundreds of features that users have suggested to add to Spotify and by taking this step, we hope to encourage the developer community to expand our service." (Developers should note that the API key cannot be shared, so resulting programs can’t be open source.)

As a journalist and beta tester, I’ve had access to Spotify for months, and my valid Spotify username should mean I’ll be able to use whatever programs result from this API. However, anyone who can’t use Spotify will also not be able to use apps developed with the API. According to a line in the agreement, "You may not make the API, Service or Content available to any person who is not a user having valid login credentials for the Service issued by Spotify."

Hopefully, for the sake of U.S. music fans, this delay in rolling out the service stateside is a mere matter of getting ducks in a row, rather than another frustrating instance of the music industry dragging its heels on new technology. Otherwise, Spotify could be available on videogame consoles in Europe before it’s even available on computers in the states.

Many users tend to set their Windows XP Automatic Updates on so that the OS will routinely check the Windows Updates Web site for new high-priority Windows security patches, critical updates, hot fixes, service packs, etc. to protect the computer from the latest security threats. Leaving the Automatic Updates feature in activated mode is convenient for users so that the updates can be done automatically. However, many users with updates installed sometimes might have software compatibility or other random technical problems. If this happens, the easiest way to resolve it is to remove the newly installed updates and revert the system to its prior state. To remove the updates installed, users can go to control panel and use the remove program feature to remove/uninstall the newly installed file. Alternately, a free tiny utility, Windows XP Update Remover, will be useful.

Windows XP Update Remover is a free Windows application which allows users to quickly and completely remove or uninstall the updates installed in the computer. Windows XP Update remover will remove $NtUninstall backup folders and associated uninstalled information from the computer. Users can download the free Windows XP Update Remover via the link here. Once the program is installed, users will see a complete list of Windows updates installed in the computer. Users can thence choose the updates to be removed.