Adopting a process-per-tab model is currently being implemented (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis), and I imagine once that's done we will be discussing Chrome a lot more.
Obviously I wasn't suggesting you weren't watching Chrome at all, but it's good to hear you're making the right decisions in competing with Chrome (primarily the reduction of Firefox's inherent clunkiness and slowness).
There's been several articles about this:
Based on my experience, Mozilla has a lot of reasons to be afraid of Chrome.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/
We are nearing the end of our Firefox 3 cycle (Firefox 4 is going to be released next month), and that's where our significant speed improvements have been implemented in the last 2 years. It's about even with Chrome speed-wise.