I'd have to say the developer tools are comparable to Firebug and won't freeze Chrome the way Firebug periodically freezes Firefox.

You, my friend, clearly don't use Firebug that much. Until you can add new attributes to existing selectors in developer tools, it simply cannot compare

You can also do that with Chrome's builtin inspector.

How? It doesn't seem to work like Firebug does where I can just double click and new attributes...

Double click to edit any existing attribute; move cursor after semicolon; type new attribute; press Enter.

Works in any browser:

http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite

Last time I tried firebuglite, it didn't really work in any browser.