I think I'm gonna change my operating system

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Flock, the social web browserYep, I think the Flock browser might just be the one for me (currently using Firefox).

I know, calling a web browser an 'operating system' is so silly ... but for me the browser is the only bit of software I use. It runs my apps, it loads when I turn the machine on, it saves all my data ... what else should I call it?

And why change? Well, Flock was always a contender but in the earlier releases it just didn't hang together as well as Firefox even though they both share the same underlying code. With the release of version 1.0 (beta) I have re-visited and been pleasantly surprised at it's evolution.

It fits perfectly with my "life online" with it's direct hooks into Flickr, delicious (the dots are going, remember where you heard it first) and nearly all other parts of my life in the cloud.

I won't try and explain how it has Flickr photo's built-in, uses your online bookmarks as default and keeps a track of your Facebook contacts out of the box - read their Getting Started page

What's holding me back is this line from the extension ("add-on") page:
Sure, there are a lot of Firefox extensions out there. Most of them do work with Flock, but some don't. If you have a favorite extension, go ahead and try to load it in Flock. If a warning dialog pops up, we can't guarantee it will work with Flock (but it still might - it just wasn't designed for Flock, and probably wasn't tested with Flock either). If nothing pops up, you can be sure you're set.

You should also keep in mind that some extensions affect the performance of Firefox and Flock. We cannot guarantee speedy Flock performance if you have extensions installed, so we suggest choosing your extensions wisely.

Whilst I agree with the last paragraph and I think I might be suffering from some add-ons slowing me down (meebo is my guess but no evidence yet) I'm not happy about having to lose some of the fine Firefox add-ons I use.

For the moment I'm gonna run both Flock and Firefox and with the former as the default browser. If I end up switching too many times then I'll remove it and wait for v1.1 / v1.0 (alpha), or whatever they get around to calling the next major release.

However - if you are a person that uses all the 'standard' online services for your day-to-day e-life then I would seriously consider Flock as an alternative to whatever you're using now - here's what others have said:
Get Flock

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