Unless you're rendering 3D video or editing multiple podcasts at once, any Mac made in the last 10 years can adequately handle anything you're going to throw at it. Chrome is somewhat more memory intensive, but not in any way someone working at your level would ever notice. Worst case, you try Firefox instead. Definitely stop taking advice from the edge-case nerds who hang out on specialty forums, they're not average users in any way.
That said, if you like the msn.com news feeds, keep using them. You'd likely see the same stories at Google News or Apple News or any other aggregator, but stick with whatever makes you most comfortable. The search bar there is a just a shortcut to bing.com. Like I said, you can start any search straight in the address bar - I think Macs default to a Google search, but you should be able to change that to Bing in Safari settings if you care.
