Microsoft may have finally convinced me...

[Greg G.]

...to DUMP IE!  IE9 stinks!  I'm using Google Chrome now.  Not as many bells and whistles, but it's fast and gets the job done w/o the IE9 bugs!

[Russ Kirk]

I keep hearing bad reports on the IE program.

At work I'm stuck using IE7 and XP. 

I'm not happy with the constant crashes and blue screens on both work and home PC.    So, a while back, when it came time for new home computer I took a leap of faith and switched to and Apple iMac. I love it!  I'm not bashing MS products, just saying I like the iMac better.

I work from home and i used  to have the MAc and PC side by side.  When I started inthe mornign I woudl turn on both machines.  The Mac booted up a 30-90 seconds faster than the PC.

What is missing from Google's Chome that IE had?

I keep hearing the good reports about Google's Chrome,  has anyone tried it for the Mac?

[Wallphone]

FWIW I mostly use Firefox but made the mistake of upgrading to 4.0.1. It is very slow & unstable crashing all the time. I'm going to try to uninstall it and go back to an earlier version that worked great. Opera seems to work best with eBay for me. Chrome is OK but I can't seem to tweak it to my liking yet. I hardly ever use IE, it's hard to believe that it is still the #1 browser with the problems I have with it. Sometimes I turn it on and all my toolbars are black so you can't read what they are.
Doug Pav

[MDK]

Firefox works well for me, but I've also discovered SRWare Iron, which is an "un'Googled" Chrome browser. It's like Google Chrome without Google's intrusion.

[deedubya3800]

I've been a loyal Firefox user since version 0.9. It's not that I wouldn't consider using anything else, but I've always felt at hoam with the Fx interface and I've scarcely had any problems with it. However, I do strongly recommend having at least 2 gigs of RAM because it likes to bloat after you've had a lot of stuff open since the last browser restart.

And I can't help seeing "F1W" in "FWIW"!

[Greg G.]

I keep hearing bad reports on the IE program.

At work I'm stuck using IE7 and XP. 

What is missing from Google's Chome that IE had?

I've only been using GC for a few days, but one thing I just noticed today is it doesn't have "Print Preview" when I right click a web page I want to print.  That was handy in IE so that I didn't have to print 5 pages of crap when I only wanted one particular page.

One of the bugs in IE9 have to do with some videos.  It displays them in the upper left of the screen and you can't go full screen or pause it.  The only way to get it to stop is to refresh the screen.  And if you scroll down the page, the video follows and "flickers" even if you don't play it.  On some news pages, videos won't play at all.

[Bill]

Like deedubya, I have used Firefox for a long time, without problems. All my machines run WinXT SP3 and now Firefox 4.0.1. It seems to be a good combination. I don't experience any of the problems mentioned above, even with several tabs open. It even has Print Preview which, as mentioned, is very handy for avoiding Printer Pages Bloat.

Years ago, I tried an early verison of IE, and swore "never again". And on the OS side, I heard enough bad reviews of Vista, even from the rah-rah consumer PC mags, that I never made the move. I am assured that the new version of Vista (Win 7) is better, but my machines won't run it and I am very happy with XT - so I am a happy camper as things are.

Who knows what the differences between our experiences. But I think Firefox is great.

Bill

[Dan]

I am still on IE seven, and don't plan to change, although my sons swear by firefox.

[Greg G.]

The verdict is still out on GC.  It's sleek and it's fast, but the lack of a print preview is a major drawback because I often print out pages from various things online.  The print dialog box still has the option of which pages you want to print, but w/o knowing which one I really want, it's a shot in the dark.  It isn't always just the first page.

[jsowers]

I use IE8 at home with XP and haven't had any major problems with eBay or the Forum, but I don't do streaming video since I still use dialup. Briny, you can uninstall IE9 and it should put IE8 or whatever you had before back on. It will go in reverse, or at least that's worked for me on earlier versions. Look in Add/Remove programs for Windows Internet Explorer 9 or something to that effect.

Also, anything you install that's Microsoft, be sure to also install the updates. I don't usually hop on their bandwagon until the software has been out for a year or so, just for the bugs to fly away. And all that being said, I use Firefox 3.6.17 at work and IE6 to get to some legacy file servers and both still do the job for me.

My preference for old phones spills over into old computers. I still have an IBM Win98 machine I use at work sometimes, and a Mac G4 with OS9. Both are rock solid dependable. I also still have my original Mac SE that boots in 15 seconds and still works fine. Below is its picture (the keyboard is stored behind it).

[gpo706]

I have had 3 towers wrecked by using Windows, the blue screen of death always occurs after 18 months - 2 years and you lose all the stuff on your hard drive (including my phone inventory).

So bye, bye Bill, I'm running on Ubuntu and Firefox now, Windows couldn't even find my ethernet connection without downloading more software, I booted in Ubuntu and it came straight up, no fuss.

I'd never use Microsoft again even if they paid me to.

Mac users don't seem to have to put up with this crap either, go figure..

[Greg G.]

The verdict is still out on GC.  It's sleek and it's fast, but the lack of a print preview is a major drawback because I often print out pages from various things online.  The print dialog box still has the option of which pages you want to print, but w/o knowing which one I really want, it's a shot in the dark.  It isn't always just the first page.

Verdict is in, I switched.  The print preview that I was concerned about just appears at a different point along with the print options after you select print.

[AE_Collector]

I'm ready to toss in the towel. Been converting from an older to a newer computer the last few days. Both are running Microsoft XP and I have always used IE as a browser and Outlook (not Outlook Express) for email.

Several years ago I used the MS File Tranfer Wizard to move eevrything from old to new computer and I was amazed at how smooth it all went. So fast forward to "now"  with me doing it again and I have had absolutely nothing but trouble making it work. After hours and hours i am slowly getting things working again on the newer computer but I have tried three times to move my email this way and everythime I try it I get a different result. And none of the results have moved the email that I've moved from In Box to individual file folders to keep for the time being. I am amazed tat something that worked so slick last time is such a PITA this time around.

Rum & Coke Time.......

Terry

[JorgeAmely]

Terry:

GC or Firefox + gmail. No problems whatsoever.

[GG]

Cross-platform here and not ideological either way.

On the Mac side I use Safari, which is fast & capable up to the point where you have a lot of browser windows open: then it bogs down like crazy and won't deallocate memory when you close browser windows. 

On the Windows side I'm moving from XP to 7 via a new machine, and so far I'm impressed.  Using IE8 for browser, and only go to highly-safe sites such as BBC News for a test site and of course the various Panasonic Certified Systems Dealers sites for PBX firmware and so on.  In that role, IE8 works fine, no problems. 

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Something I figured out how to do in Win7 that *really* helps with work:

New Panasonic PBXs (KXTDE, KXNCP) connect to the laptop via an Ethernet "Maintenance port" jack.  However setting this up on the old WinXP machine made it unable to use DHCP to connect to broadband via my router, which meant I couldn't connect to remote PBXs via their IP addresses.  This could be adjusted manually but it was a pain in the rear end.

On Win7 I found a bunch of settings that enabled me to designate a primary and alternate network: one being DHCP, the other being PBX port, and Win7 knows how to switch back & forth between them automatically.  It takes a few minutes in either direction but it's automatic and reliable, and a serious help when going back and forth between a switch I'm programming locally and one I'm accessing remotely. 

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My preferred "word processor" on Mac is TextEdit, and on Windows is NotePad.  Both of these are lightning fast, no bloat, no distractions, nothing to get between the mind and the page.  They produce documents in .RTF (includes basic formatting: bold, underline, italics, and choice of fonts) and in .TXT (plaintext ASCII, no formatting, and universally cross-platform compatible).  If you're using any conventional word processor, try TextEdit or NotePad and you'll be surprised at how much faster they are. 

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I'm also running Ubuntu in the form of eeBuntu on an ASUS eePC with solid state drive.   This worked well enough for the tasks it was designed for, but I could never find a "text editor" that was similar to and compatible with TextEdit and NotePad.  Instead I was stuck with OpenOffice, which is fine for spreadsheets but bloatware for word processing.

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So: question: anyone got a good "text editor" (stripped-down word processor) for Ubuntu? 

Also, is there an update for Mail on Mac that provides a plug in for crypto (PGP/GPG)?  As it is I'm using Thunderbird for mail, but it has its clunky slow points whereas Mail was fast & seamless.  Yet crypto is an essential utility, including the ability to set keylengths longer than the standard options.