One day, I was surprised to see I got an email in my hotmail account which I almost never used. I got this...
Hi GamingFox,
I came across your thread by chance whilst surfing for some advice on Firefox v/s IE.6 and I see you have the Firefox on your machine. I hope you don't mind me asking, but is it worth the hassle installing the latest Firefox? I guess Microsoft probably made it an annoying task to remove IE.6 and i don't particularly want to be burdened with two brousers on my system, or attempt an dodgy IE.6 amputation and risk system failure. Do you have any simple advice for me
After thinking awhile on how to reply to these good questions regarding Firefox. I know I am a HUGE Firefox fanboy, so I know that my opinion is very likely biased. So I replied in unbiased views as much as possible.
Installing the latest Firefox is, in my opinion, is not a hassle at all, because Firefox is designed to help IE users to switch quickly with less problems as possible. The download is only 4.7 MB which is pretty small compared to other browsers. The installion is very quick and clean. It will ask you if you want import all of your IE's stuffs like favorites, cookies, stored passwords, etc. to Firefox.
I strongly recommended to use Firefox as your default browser but keep the IE (I will explain why). The Internet has many benefits that everyone want to enjoy... instant communcations, endless amount of information (and disinformations), and entrainment (games and stuffs). Thats what the Internet browsers are for. They connect us and help us "browse" the world wide web, the heart of the Internet.
However, Internet is a very dangerous world, filled with viruses, spywares, adwares, scams, phishing, and many more. The list is endless. Internet Explorer (version 6) is the most common Internet browser in the world, but also, it is the most dangerous. Most viruses, spywares, scams, etc. are designed to take advantages of IE's flaws. I have seen many of my friends going through pain of attacks and removal of many spywares, including myself once. I switched to Firefox, and I conviced my firends to switch too, and ever since, my firends and I never got spywares or viruses from browsing the Internet. There are many more reasons why Firefox is more safer than IE, but it take too long to list them here.
In my opinion, IE's hassle is far greater than any hassle Firefox will ever give you. However, I strongly advised to NOT remove IE because Microsoft has built IE right into the Windows OS which make it virtually impossible to remove without destablizing the entire OS. Plus, there are some websites that are hard-coded for IE only, and some required Active-X (a component built in IE, and is the main cause of spyware and viruses infection) like banking, online virus scanners, Windows Update site, and a few more. But you can install a Firefox extension (IEView) which offer one-click view in IE from Firefox.
I believe that having both browser on same system is no burden at all. Both play together very nicely. I even run both of them at the same time without any problem at all. I have 4 different internet browsers on my computer and they never cause each other trouble or put any stress on the system. (Firefox is my default internet browser by the way). Plus, Firefox doesn't require a lot of memory (either on Hard Drive or on RAM). The official system requirments listed is 52 MB Hard Drive, but my Firefox use around 25 MB on my Hard Drive (not counting the cache).
My advice is, try Firefox out. It won't bites (despite an animal name). If you don't like it, you can uninstall it. The uninstallion is also quick and clean as its installion. Its free and won't cost you a thing. The time and effort it take are very little.
But remember, Firefox is not perfect. There is no such thing as perfect softwares. Firefox has some bugs, but will be resolved soon or later. Firefox 1.0 just came out less than a year ago, so it bound to have some bugs. However it got very good start, and I believe it will make a great finish.
For more infomation about Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Wikipedia has some good (and long) articles on them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox
If you have any more questions or need any help getting started. I will always be happy to answer them. Good luck.
Now, before you guys get on my back about what I said about Firefox using little memory on RAM. I am perfectly aware that Firefox eat a lot of RAM if not being careful. But I consider that as a bug which will be hopefully resolved in the future.
A day later, I got a reply back. He tried it out. :D
Cheers for the advice. I ran Firefox and am most impressed both by the speed of page loading and user friendliness of the program. I wasn't too sure if it would interfere with IE6 and effectively it didn't. Transfer of all my favorites went smoothly and the general appearance of the web pages and browser is a lot better than that of IE6.
I have had some intrusions with IE6 like:
AproposMedia Browser Modifier
CoolWebSearch Browser Modifier
IST.SideFind Adware
YourSiteBar Spyware
TargetSaver Trojan Downloader
Unclassified.Spyware.45 Spyware
Unclassified.Spyware.57 Spyware
WhenU.SaveNow Adware
..... the effect was not really noticeable, no real speed loss, and Adware SE personal didn't even notice the threats on my system. I was only after downloading Beta1 from Microsoft that it picked them out. I've had a couple of viruses too but Norton sorted them out spontaneously.
The thing that worries me a bit though is, my Internet connection is constantly running and when I check the program manager to see what is running and how data transfer is going, I find an incredible amount of data coming into my laptop and it does concern me a bit. My firewall is a Microsoft too and it has done very well so far, but those ever growing data numbers do look dodgy !
Thanx for the advice, I didn't particularly like the thought of trying to removing essential Microsoft software that doesn't want to be removed, It doesn't seem too bright and I don't trust the XP response either.
The version of Firefox I downloaded was 1.0.3 and so the multiple websites advertised, it is the latest version with patches for recently discovered holes, something to do with Javascript, but it was beyond my understanding.
I just make sure my virus definitions are updated everyday, the anti-spyware once a week and keep a keen eye on my registry and program files for abnormalities, I also stay aware about pop ups that shouldn't be there. Other than that fingers crossed the laptop stays vigorous and healthy.
Got to go now, thanx so much for the advice
He seems to like Firefox better than IE. He even commented about his past experience being attacked through IE.
I know this sound like just another Firefox success story, but this is a true story. Thought I share it to the rest of the world.
