Installation
Chrome is available for Mac OS X and Linux, as well as Windows—all recent versions of Windows, back to XP. That's something even Microsoft's own Internet Explorer 11 can't claim, since its runs only on Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. Installation is a snap, handled by a very small stub program, and no reboot is required.
When you first run Chrome, the whole page is about signing into a Google account, but, fear not, you can simply open a new tab and close that one. Signing in doesn't change the behavior of the browser, but it does raise more concerns about browser-activity tracking. On the plus side, signing in to an account gives you the benefit of being able to sync your browser settings and bookmarks on different computers (more on this later).