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A week with Edge

I have been using Internet Explorer ever since I switched back to Windows, and have been satisfied with it. Apart from its end of life status, and a couple of annoying bugs when I have more than 10 tabs open, it has served me well. With the latest Windows 10 update, I wanted to try the next generation browser: Edge.

Going in, I knew that Edge is not a finished product, and that it has a long way until it competes with the other established browsers on the market. Nevertheless I decided to give it a try.

My first experiences with it were positive: it is light weight and very fast, and when I have many tabs open it does not suffer from the same feat as IE does, where the browser hangs randomly and the abominable recover web page ribbon appears at the bottom of the screen.

I was also surprised when I did not end up using the cool new features such as the readability view and web notes as much as I thought. I liked the integration with Cortana through the context menu, which I can use to define terms, and context search within the page.

Because of Edge's maturity level, there are many missing feature annoyances. I miss bookmark syncing between devices, as well as open tab syncing, something I got used to using Safari on the Mac long ago. I also miss the support for extensions, although I am sure these will come in some day.

Overall I like Edge, and I think with every release it will become better. I'll continue using it as my every day browser, however if I were not at Microsoft, I would have probably have gone back to IE and waited to make Edge my every day browser till it became a bit more mature.

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