Mac fans have been able to try Google Chrome for themselves for quite some time now but this is the first unofficial portable version available that you can take anywhere.

However, since it is still a beta version, Google Chrome Portable may be prone to bugs and instability but it's enough to give you a good idea as to what the finished product will look and feel like. Note that like the official version of Google Chrome, it only works on Intel Macs.

The first thing I noticed about Google Chrome Portable is that it's unbelievably lightweight. While Firefox was consuming anything from 20-30% of my Mac's CPU, Chrome barely registered on the scale, occasionally touching 1%. For anyone plagued with Firefox memory leaks and crashes, this alone is surely going to be a compelling reason to give Chrome a go. As you'd expect, Google Chrome also features tabbed browsing, which, visually, I find a little easier than Firefox, which tends to cram them together somewhat.

Google Chrome Portable is also extremely quick. Surfing the Softonic site, page-loads took less then a second and all images were loaded very quickly. YouTube in particular loaded with lightening speed. Overall. the handling of sites using JavaScript in particular was mightily impressive. Its nice to know that with Google Chrome, even if there is a problem with one of your tabs, it won't crash the whole browser, just the tab itself.

If only there were more extensions for Google Chrome Portable, I'd seriously consider converting when the final version is released. Based on the early evidence in this release though, Safari and Firefox may well have a real fight on their hands.