Is Focusing on Browser Performance Important?

Whenever a new version of a Web browser is released, something sure to be listed in the release notes will have to do with performance. It could be anything from a more optimized JavaScript engine to having a smaller memory footprint. All in all, any performance increase is appreciated, but I do wonder if such a hardcore focus is necessary.

I often see articles posted that pit a bunch of browsers against one another in various tests, and I’ve even written one such article myself. In the end, some browsers do tend to perform quite well in some tests, while others don’t perform well at all. We’re not only talking about performance half of the time, but standards compliance also. And if a browser does better than the rest of the pack, you can be sure the developer will brag about it.

That said, has there ever been an occasion where you discovered that one browser performed better than another, and it caused you to move to it? Generally speaking, Internet Explorer is usually the worst performer, while Opera tends to be the best. For me, I appreciate the strides some developers take to make sure their browser is better than the rest, but I can honestly say I’ve never been tempted to move to Opera just because it proves so much faster in a JavaScript benchmark.

Likewise, even if I were using the slowest browser on the market, I am not too sure I’d move over, if the feature-set is what I have come to like. At what point does performance become more important than features? I look at Windows Vista/7, which both hog resources to a much greater degree than XP. That sure didn’t stop people from upgrading, as the feature-set was far more attractive, and current.

What do you guys think? Can we reach a point where the focus on performance is just unnecessary?