Running cnn.com and nothing else, Firefox 3 is taking close to 100M of physical memory, and Chrome is using about 17.5M.

OK, I have del.icio.us and downthemall installed as plugins for Firefox, but come on.

Chrome is also much, much more snappy than FFX 3, but I’m sure you all know that by now.

Top it all off with the fact that Chrome barely has any chrome. On Vista, it puts the tab bar in the window titlebar.

Given the memory footprint and the very careful use of screen real estate, for any ultraportable machine, Chrome is going to be my new default browser. Hands down. This means any UMPC and/or netbook I use.

For the record, we’re getting into mobile phone territory with the memory footprint on this thing.

Update: As I add tabs, the memory footprint begins to lose to Firefox. It’s less pronounced at lower tab numbers (2 or 3) but up at 5-8, Firefox starts to win.