The browser is one of the most–if not THE most–used applications on the PC. For Day 15 of the 30 Days with Surface Pro series, I’m checking out the different browser options in Windows 8 to see which one I should use as my default browser on the Surface Pro.

Internet Explorer 10 is installed by default in Windows 8. I downloaded and installed Firefox, Chrome, and Safari as well. Browser choice elicits impassioned responses from ardent supporters of specific browsers, but the truth is it’s very subjective.

The speed at which pages load typically varies by milliseconds and isn’t worthy of debating for practical purposes. It really comes down to the look and feel, and choosing the browser that seems the most comfortable and intuitive for you. Opinions vary in this department, so one person might love Firefox, while the next hates Firefox and loves Chrome.

That, however, is not the biggest deal. The weird thing I found is that some of the browsers act differently in Windows 8 depending on whether you’re in the Windows 8 Modern / Metro interface, or in desktop mode, and that the behavior can change depending on whether or not the browser is designated as the default.

Read Surface Pro, Day 15: Bizarre browser behavior for more about the odd ways browsers act in Windows 8.

So, is IE9 only a quarter as successful as Firefox 3? No. Statistics are fun because they paint an entirely different picture when viewed through a different lens. So, let’s put the IE9 stats in perspective and see how it compares.

The Firefox browser is available for Windows…and Mac OS X…and Linux…and FreeBSD. Basically, Firefox is available to run on virtually all PCs in existence.

Contrast that with Internet Explorer 9. Internet Explorer has always been Windows-centric, meaning it is not available for platforms other than Windows. But, Internet Explorer 9 narrows the field even farther because it is only compatible with WIndows 7 and Windows Vista–not XP. That means that the audience for IE9 is restricted to only about one third of the PCs in the world.

If you try to draw an apples to apples comparison, you can take the 2.35 million IE9 downloads and multiply by 3 to make up for the difference in the number of potential PCs. Extrapolating the statistics–if IE9 had an equivalent audience, we can assume it would have had 7.05 million downloads.

Still quite impressive, but also still lagging behind the success of the Firefox 3 launch. And, odds are fair that the IE9 downloads are almost completely cannibalizing IE8 market share. To be fair, though, let’s give IE9 six months or so and then see how it compares against specific versions of Firefox or Chrome.