RE: [PCTECH] Alternative browsers

[John Harvey <jharvey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings,

1. Having IE should not be a danger. Using it is depending on where you go.
Actually, you need IE to perform Windows Update, which is all I use it for
now.

2. Love Firefox. Very stable. I'd say that over 90% of the sites I visit are
Firefox-friendly. Once in a blue moon I have to resort to IE. 

3. Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/. I haven't made
the switch yet, but that's on the 'to-do' list. It's free.

4. If I were you, I'd go with Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla 1.7 seems a
bit bloated and a little slower than Firefox. But that's just my opinion.

5. Sounds like you're in pretty good shape if you keep everything updated.
Norton and McAffee all have advocates (and detractors). I use Norton and
haven't had any troubles. I've heard some very good things about PC-Cillin
from TrendMicro, though I have no direct experience. I just installed
Webroot's Spy Sweeper (http://www.webroot.com/wb/products/spysweeper/) on
someone else's recommendation and it nabbed several little buggies that
slipped under Spybot and Ad-Aware's radar screen. Downside: it's not
free...$30 for a single user.

Cheers,
John Harvey

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Bale [mailto:dbale@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 6:09 PM
To: pctech@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [PCTECH] Alternative browsers

Multi-faceted post:

1) Does the mere presence of IE make it "hazardous" or do you actually have
to use it to be vulnerable?

2) Is anyone using Firefox?  I'm wondering how stable it is (it's beta) and
how soon it will shed the beta tag.

3) Does Firefox have an email client (yet)?

4) If an email client is important to me, should I hold off on Firefox and
use the latest Mozilla (which has an email client)?  If you're using
Firefox, what email client are you using?  (free is good!)

5) Don't laugh, but I just upgraded my Win95 box to Win98SE last week.  The
box is only 233MHz & 128MB ram, so my choices are very limited.  The Win95
was originally loaded back in '97 over a Win3.11 install, and I've never
done a scratch install until I did the Win98SE upgrade last week.  All of a
sudden my PC is a lot faster!  Anyway, it seems as though I was somewhat
protected by using Win95 because all of the vulnerabilities that were being
exploited were "newer" technology that MS added in after Win95, i.e. the
Sasser virus only affected XP (& 2000?), so my trusty Win95 box was largely
unaffected.  I am connected to the internet via cable with a Gigafast
router/firewall, and I use Norton AV and Spybot.  Is it a fair question to
ask whether I am in good shape?

TIA, db