Google Reader got an update today which makes it more of a usable RSS feed interface. They’ve still got some work, but I use it for all of my science news feeds and I think it is fast and a lot of the features you might find in a client-side (and for pay) piece of software.
Since the update, I think Reader is quite a bit slower than before. I also get server erros now, which never happened in the six months I had been using Reader prior to this update. Hopefully the PhD’s over at Google will get this smoothed out.