There's a new Web browser in town and so far it looks pretty darn good, especially from a privacy perspective. However, there is a caveat, which I'll discuss in a moment. The new tool, called Browzar, is available free to anyone. The current version is only 264.4KB in size. That's not a misprint, it's really that small!

Browzar is billed as "the first ever 'freedom' Internet browser" because of the way it works: It doesn't save a cache, history, cookies, favorites, or other telltale information. When you close Browzar, any information that was temporarily stored is automatically deleted, so you don't need to remember to do that manually.

Using Browzar is incredibly simple to use because it's contained in a single executable file, and technically you don't even need to install Browzar onto a system. If your system allows you to, you could just go to the Browzar site, click the download link, and tell the system to open the file and run it.

I took Browzar for a test drive and surfed many Web sites. So far, I haven't found any problems with compatibility. Browzar is currently available for Windows 98 Second Edition and later, and requires Microsoft IE 5.5 or later to be installed on the computer.

Obviously, Browzar gains a lot of its functionality based on the capabilities of an already-installed copy of IE. When I tested the tool, I found that it supports NTLM authentication, JavaScript, and other features such as Adobe Systems' .pdf files and Flash. Components to support the last two features were installed on the system I used to test-drive Browzar.

A quick test also revealed that Browzar's reliance on IE extends to IE's security settings. For example, if ActiveX controls and scripting are disabled in IE, then sites that rely on those technologies won't work in Browzar either.

Browzar is best suited for situations in which you want to make sure nobody will be able to easily recover your browsing history and other sensitive information that you might have entered while surfing various sites.