Google Chrome on Windows 2000 / Asus Eee PC

Japanese people are amazingly smart. I was able to change my user-agent as one blog suggested to download the Google Chrome setup, but it wouldn't run... So I downloaded the files in a zip. It warned about Windows 2000 not being supported, started like it was going to do something and had one of them fatal errors. Why bother trying the next approach then...? Because I tried the browser and like it. It is faster, and any gain in speed on an EeePC is much apprechiated!

* Original blog in Japanese
* Google Translation of said blog.
* Local copy: chrome2k.zip

Download the chrome2k.zip file. I didn't run the bat, because I was already able to grab the chrome setup file with the user-agent changed in Firefox, but this is what it does:

copy "%PROGRAMFILES%\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.exe" "%PROGRAMFILES%\Internet Explorer\IEXP.exe"
regedit /s chrome2k.reg
"%PROGRAMFILES%\Internet Explorer\IEXP.exe" http://www.google.co.jp/chrome

That .reg that comes with it changes a registry value (ApplicationGoo) which comes up with very little information on Google. It has to do with Application Compatibility, and from the poorly translated site, it basically just makes the following applications think they're being ran under XP: IEXP.EXE, ChromeSetup.exe, chrome_installer.exe, GoogleUpdate.exe, setup.exe.

Might be neat to keep the copy of IEXP set for XP compat. :)

So anyway. It works! Not sure why the nightly build didn't work. This only changed the setup files to think it was XP... Then again, I didn't try the nightly build on XP either yet. :)

The Asus Eee PC I have runs at like 650MHz, and Firefox is much faster than IE at big web applications like meebo (my benchmark). With Google Chrome, meebo runs without any hesitation, as when using Firefox on my other older laptop (1ghz XP machine). So yeah, I'm making the switch on both computers. Sorry, Firefox. :(