Fast Browser Pro8.1

The web browser world is nowadays all about the big names like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera or Safari. Although only a handful of users have heard about them, there are some other programs that strive to join the elite of this particular software category.This is the case of Fast Browser Pro, a pretty simple yet useful browser based on the much more popular IE engine. Nevertheless, it comes with a lot of enhancements, while still retaining the overall appearance of Microsoft's application.

Performance

The developer claims Fast Browser Pro is able to handle up to 180 webpages while remaining pretty fast and light on hardware resources, but we really wouldn't go that far.During our tests, with only a fraction of that number of websites loaded the application was putting the resources through a tremendous stress.

Key features to play with

The most interesting features include up to 500 search engines, a huge collection of links from almost every category, webpage translation, quick downloads and cookie management.The 'Security' options it comes with can be enabled or disabled with a single click and they pertain to ActiveX, Java Permissions, Scripts, form submitting and cross domain data.Compatibility with newer iterations of Windows can be a problem at times. We were unable to run it directly after installation on Windows 7, only in compatibility mode with XP and Vista.

Bottom line

All things considered, Fast Browser Pro can become a decent alternative and provide another simple way of exploring the Internet, but there's still a lot of work to be done.