Sorry if this is old news, but I stumbled on a browser called Webkit for Mac. This thing is truly FAST. Surfing the web on my OSX'd 1000H netbook smokes everything else (except Webkit now on my Macmini). Seems quite stable too. If you're running OSX, you owe it to yourself to try this.

The WebKit Open Source Project

IIRC, Safari is built on webkit, except that Safari is a version behind, usually. The new Safari 4 beta is much faster than Safari 3, mostly due to the improved javascript implementation in later versions of webkit (check out the sunspider java benchmark, if you're OCD like me: SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark)

haven't tried S4 beta, will try that next, thanks

Chrome is built on webkit too... but sounds like you are on mac so you can't use it lulz.

The Webkit guys have a policy, that no code submission is EVER allowed to be slower than what's already in there, regardless of the reason.

The benefit to using it (or Safari 4 beta) will be if you use sites that are heavy on AJAX/javascript, such as Google Maps, GMail, etc.