It’s something like that.

Image: My Apokalips.

We picked up a new Motorola cable-modem lastnight, and it changed everything. It’s a SURFboard model, but not the common 5-series, this one’s their new DOCSIS 3.0 standard-compliant beast, the SB6120.

Using the old, hand-me-down pile of crap that Comcast originally gave us, we were lucky to attain downspeeds of 10 Mbps, while upload speeds rarely broke 1.8 Mbps, and usually hovered far lower. Many people have beef with Comcast, but fact is, it’s not so much their lines that drag service down in most areas, it’s the modems.

30+ Mbps Down, 4+ Up

I talked to a Comcast service employee a while back, and asked him about line speeds. He told me that technically, while we were only ordering the regular 15 Mbps service, we’d be able to milk it up to about 20 Mbps with a slightly better, commercially available modem (as opposed to the failbox he was handing me). I made a mental note to check out modems, but left it at that for the time being.

After a pretty severe outage incident late one night (while I was working), a gracious Comcast service rep offered to upgrade my account to the 18 Mbps connection. Of course, having never actually seen my speeds reach anywhere near the original speed limit, I was skeptical of actually seeing any improvement so long as I had to cope with the loaner modem. As it turns out, Comcast is far looser with their line speeds than they let on to be.

Check out the SB6120 at Motorola.

After initial setup — which means basically trying to connect to the internet and getting Comcastrolled by the annoying customer service roadblock for first time connections — the first thing I noticed was that instead of loading, webpages seemed to explode onto my screen. It was amazing, fantastic, ridiculous and euphoric all at the same time. I immediately speed-tested, and after seeing the results, repeated the test again, then again, and again.

I spent 100 dollars on this modem at Best Buy (because it was there, and I hate shipping costs). I’m not sure if I’ve ever gotten so much out of 100 bucks in my life, since everything done online in my apartment happens three times faster than it did a day ago. Bravo Motorola, and additional thanks go to Comcast for being so liberal with connection speeds.

Notice Anything?

It’s not a huge difference, but it’s noticeable to those who use Google regularly. The front landing page is now more obviously inviting and accessible for touch-screen devices. The results page is cleaner with formerly hidden options brought to light as standard fare, and sidebar prominence. Overall, they’ve upped the efficiency while keeping it classy, and that’s all anyone could ask when something as iconic as Google’s design gets tweaked.

You Can Activate It For Your Account

The Method is dead simple — you set a cookie. You have to do this for every browser in which you want the new design to take effect. After that, when using a browser that you’ve activated, your entire account will be opened for the redesign. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to Google.com
• Clear your browser’s address bar once there, then enter this code:

javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com");

iPhone users: It doesn’t appear to work for mobile Safari, but if you’d like to try the code anyway, click here.

• Press Enter.
• Nothing should happen. You’re only setting a cookie; the change will not take effect until you reload Google again.
• (Reload Google)

Voila! Now, bear in mind that the redesign isn’t in effect for every page in Google’s lineup just yet, so don’t be surprised when you click on Images and see the regular old interface for now. It’s not only experimental, but much like Wave, it’s also incomplete. Also, should you run into difficulty, or in the odd chance the cookie goes bad and stops Google from loading correctly, simply clear out your cookies like you’re taking out the trash. No harm, no foul. That being said, happy Googling :)

Thanks to Matt Karolian and the guys at Gizmodo for getting this out to people.

Before I get the inevitable “why are you using Safari anyway? Why not use Firefox??” An explanation:

I’ve been using Safari for about two months now because I had an episode with Firefox 3.5 that left a bad taste in my mouth. Google, which I very transparently champion as the company that will shape the Internet as we know it, should be a safe bet when guaging a browser’s compatibility. Firefox failed to render a simple option-box; it completely ignored the existence of a drop-down menu in my Google Adsense settings. I was severely confused as to why I was unable to change the setting, until I loaded it in Safari and realized what was happening. At that moment I shelved my Firefox icon, and I haven’t opened the app since. Safari 4, on the other hand, renders every page beautifully and efficiently. I haven’t had cause to regret the decision save for the application’s absolutely mind-numbing tab behavior, which (I won’t lie) makes me something akin to suicidal. Holding down a key every time I want to click a link isn’t exactly going to kill me, but it’s damned annoying.

Enter Google Chrome. This browser is built by people who deal with the Internet, primarily. It’s fast, responsive, beautiful, smooth, and more importantly – it’s entire existence is contingent upon the use of the most cutting edge technologies, with as little frills or baggage as possible. That’s the way a browser ought to be, and that’s the way Chrome is.

Chrome for Mac: Get it here.

So aside from the slower rendering involved in resizing the window, or in scrolling a page, I’ve not come across any problems yet. I can tell you that I’ve severely overloaded it with tabs, and I’ve put the omnibar through its paces without giving it a chance to breathe. It handled everything in stride. As of today, Google Chrome for Mac is stable enough for me, give it a shot yourself and see what you think.