The Browzar web browser is aimed at users who share computers or have privacy concerns regarding their activity on the internet.

Modern browsers are teeming with features so can often hog system resources and memory. Internet Explorer 7 is currently in the beta testing stage and will have a whole range of new functionality that will bloat its size.

In the face of this competition, Browzar has adopted a minimalist approach. The browser is a lightweight download at only 264KB, but isn’t standalone software; it relies on you running Windows and uses Internet Explorer as a base application.

You don’t need to install Browzar, instead you run the downloaded executable file directly. This means you can run it from a USB memory key and hide it from other users of your computer.

With such a clean interface, Browzar is quite simple to use. Only a few features are configurable and it makes a refreshing change to see such a bare toolbar.

By not saving cookies, keeping browsing history or the storing details you type into online forms, Browzar does a good job of protecting your privacy.

What it doesn’t do is remove traces of your tracks on the web servers you visit. For this you would have to disguise your IP address by using an anonymous proxy server. Browzar will not, therefore, shield a computer’s identity when visiting illegal websites or conducting criminal activity online.

While we understand Browzar’s functionality is necessarily limited and that it’s not intended to be a full-time replacement for IE or Firefox, there are still some glaring omissions.

For instance, there are no right-click context menus. Given that Browzar doesn’t cache data as you surf there’s no way to save image files from websites you visit.

This lack of caching can also make browsing incredibly painful on slower internet connections as each page and its associated images reload when you hit the back or forward buttons.

Browzar is distributed for free but its creator Ajaz Ahmed, founder of Freeserve, will hope to generate significant revenue from its default homepage.

The homepage is a search page run by Browzar that delivers targeted advertisements in place of proper search results. The sneaky aspect of this is that you cannot change the homepage or the default search engine for the search box on the toolbar.

Computer-savvy internet users will already know Firefox has many privacy related extensions that emulate all the functionality of Browzar in a fully featured browser.

But for others, this nifty little program will take the hassle out of maintaining privacy on your local computer.

Note: Value for money is always a tricky one when it comes to free products, but we decided that since all other browsers are free and Browzar is essentially IE with a load of features stripped out, it only deserves 2 out of 5.

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