I have one lone Windows machine on my network at home. The machine is not long for this earth, the case is failing, and it's so underpowered it's not worth fixing*. Being a Windows machine means that I constantly have to patch it and patch it's AV, and be generally paranoid about it. This week Microsoft released a huge batch of critical and serious security patches, so last night I tried to install them.
I also thought I'd try and download copy of RegClean to fix a minor problem with the registry, by accident I mistyped Google and ended up on a junk site, as I was still using IE I was bombarded with pop-ups and all sorts of crap. We run Opera or Firefox on that machine and normally never have any such problems. I had forgotted how awful IE is, do rational people choose to use it? Tonight I'll find my copy of RegClean on CD, which will be easier than trying to find it on the interweb.
* At some point I'll replace the notebook, probably with an iBook, and I fancy replacing my equally antique desktop with an IBM eServer OpenPower 710, though I'll probably just get a AMD64 box of some sorts, but it's nice to dream...
Re:using IE
ajt on 2005-02-10T12:32:19
It's not an option for me, IE doesn't run on Linux, and my system is too antique to run IE on top of WINE. If as site doesn't work in Firefox or Opera I don't use it, and complain. I agree that "IE only" is less of a problem now than it use to be, but it does still lurk. I just dislike poor sites, many are so poorly designed and tied to so specifically to one version of IE that they don't even work properly in later versions of IE.
I think the only "IE only" site I can think of that is use now are SAP's various sites, which are pretty awful if you use IE, but broken in Firefox/Opera. To add insult to injury they change the site every five seconds so your bookmarks are constantly out of date.
Even Microsoft fan boys Gartner, now recommends that sites not be designed only for IE. Seeing as I've always designed to the specifications, and tested on several platforms with several browsers, I don't have to change my sites, the same can't be said for many other sites.
I gather that mank banks are now very worried that they only support IE in their system, it's security record is so poor that one of thesedays some is going to sue because the banks wouldn't support a more secure browser, but instead forced someone to use a browser with known unfixed security problems, and a poor track record.
Re:IE...*sigh*
ajt on 2005-02-10T20:21:15
I know what you mean, but I'm the webmaster and I insisted on Firefox/Mozilla and Opera. I never touch IE except to check it out for bugs. A few select others in the IT team use Firefox, but it's just a tiny few.
