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I want a new browser... please help.

Z

Variable Constant
Z
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
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Location
Cincinnati, Ohio
OK, time for me to grow up.

I've been lazy - using IE for pretty much my whole time on-line. I had a brief love affair with Opera, but somewere around 6 or 7, the thing got all messed up. I enjoyed playing with Neoplanet, but that one went belly-up fast.

Netscape Navigator? Ugh.

But the latest IE sucks. It hangs up if you have multiple windows open, and close the top one. It hangs up if there's a flash applet running, and you close it. It hangs up sometimes for no reason after closing, and I have to go in and kill the process to open it again. It only opens a few dozen tabs, until it stops opening anything, and you have to shut it down and restart it.

And after months of using the bug report feature, there's been no apparent change, whatsoever.

So now I'm appealing to my betters - I'm a lazy Windows user (XP), and I need a better browser. Please - help me?

Thanks!
 
Opera of course - still the best. (And the new 9.5 version that you'll be able to upgrade to soon has some very nice features.)

Of course if memory usage, security, features and speed are not that important to you - well there is always FireFox - I can say it's better than IE.
 
Darat said:
Opera of course - still the best. (And the new 9.5 version that you'll be able to upgrade to soon has some very nice features.)

Of course if memory usage, security, features and speed are not that important to you - well there is always FireFox - I can say it's better than IE.
Click to expand...

Well, it has been a while. I might try Opera again.

Memory usage is a problem on this machine. I have plenty of RAM and a large hard drive, but a few of my programs apparently have some memory issues (in particular, City of Heroes). OTOH, if I'm using the Web, I'm probably not running other programs anyway.

Side question - is there any way to keep Norton AV from checking for updates every other day, without it throwing a fit? If I turn off auto updates, it just pops up warning windows and drags the system down until I do update it; and if I leave it on, it updates any time I'm doing stuff like playing CoH or Civilization, and drags the system down.

Of course, it's really time for me to get a new computer. The power supply and mother board are pretty much obsolete, and I can't upgrade anything without changing both of those; and the case won't accommodate anything better.

Someone got a grand they can give me? :D
 
Z said:
Memory usage is a problem on this machine. I have plenty of RAM and a large hard drive, but a few of my programs apparently have some memory issues (in particular, City of Heroes).
Click to expand...

CoH seems to have memory issues no matter how much RAM you have.

ETA- on toppic, I have just staretd to use opera, and it is verry ncie- except that I seem to have slightler more pages not work quite right with it than with other browsers, so I keep Firefox in reserve.
 
Well, I'm trying Opera again. It looks good so far. Nice skins available, and it no longer has that honkin' huge banner add it did last time I used it.

Lisa, I'll check out AVG. Norton's is on my last freakin' nerve.
 
Z said:
Well, I'm trying Opera again. It looks good so far. Nice skins available, and it no longer has that honkin' huge banner add it did last time I used it.
Click to expand...

It isn't free.
Seamonkey has it's uses.
 
It appears to be free. I'm using it right now - and no banner ad, or anything.

Am I missing something?
 
Firefox is very good. Opera is very good. Depends on your required features and personal preferences. IE sucks a golfball down a garden hose, IMHO.
 
Yup, Firefox is recommended. Opera too, even though Opera does seem to harvest memory from me now and then.

Firefox with the ad block option is great :)

But of course, since Opera is from Norway, it's the best
 
tsg said:
Unless you're on Linux, in which case it crashes every third page you view for no apparent reason.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't. :)

To expand and clarify, I've been using FF on Linux machines for years, and haven't experienced any problems like that. I'm a web developer, so I have the browser running pretty much all the time, with multiple sites open in tabs, including sites I'm developing.

With all the crappy test code I write, XHTML, CSS, Javascript etc you'd think my browser would be crashing all the time. It doesn't!
 
Might I suggest that if you're having memory issues, as well as Norton squacking, and its an old machine, that there may be other issues impacting IE rather than it just "sucking".

I assume your talking about IE7. In which case, I've found it to be as stable as any of the previous versions of IE. It had some initial issues, but on a PC with all the latest patches and security updates it seems to run just fine in my experience.

I'll second Lisa's recommendation for AVG. The retail version of Norton AV causes more problems than it solves in my opinion. As well as a good run through with Spybot as well.
 
I know I'm in a minority here, but I have tried all the others (and keep re-looking at them) and much as I want to leave IE forever I'm one of those annoying people that wants to see all the webpage I visit and not have some of them re-organised to be 20 feet long and 6 feet wide.

I have been using Avant Browser for years now and it's been great. It has had all the whizzy features as long, if not longer than other browsers and actually got them to work properly pretty quickly.

It is actually a front-end for IE so has the best bits of IE (whatever they are) with add-ons that work for other browsers (if you like that sort of thing).

Before someone starts grumbling that a web page 20ft long and 6ft wide is the fault of the code....

I don't care.

If I want to read a webpage...I want to read a webpage!...However inept the coder is. Avant Browser usually managed to keep page layout size within this solar system.

Just my tupence worth...

.
 
voidx said:
Might I suggest that if you're having memory issues, as well as Norton squacking, and its an old machine, that there may be other issues impacting IE rather than it just "sucking".

I assume your talking about IE7. In which case, I've found it to be as stable as any of the previous versions of IE. It had some initial issues, but on a PC with all the latest patches and security updates it seems to run just fine in my experience.
Click to expand...

IE7, all updates and patches current for all software (as of two days ago). My personal opinion, is that it's a more-or-less deliberate flaw with using IE7 on older Windows versions (XP in this case), as added incentive to switch to Vista (which I refuse to do until absolutely necessary).

I'll second Lisa's recommendation for AVG. The retail version of Norton AV causes more problems than it solves in my opinion. As well as a good run through with Spybot as well.
Click to expand...

I use Spybot as well as Ad-Aware weekly, and Norton does its thing every Monday night at 8 PM. Disk cleanup and defrag every month (though it usually doesn't need it). But IE7(.00.60.somethingorother) hangs up horribly on this machine, on my wife's older machine... K12 (my son's virtual school) has warned everyone not to upgrade from 6 because of problems between 7 and their Flash-based software.

I'll have to try AVG, but on my wife's machine, it sucks memory badly. Then again, I think hers has some serious physical problems - it sucked from day one. SLOW internal BUS, I was told.
 
logical muse said:
No it doesn't. :)

To expand and clarify, I've been using FF on Linux machines for years, and haven't experienced any problems like that. I'm a web developer, so I have the browser running pretty much all the time, with multiple sites open in tabs, including sites I'm developing.

With all the crappy test code I write, XHTML, CSS, Javascript etc you'd think my browser would be crashing all the time. It doesn't!
Click to expand...

There is a known issue with Firefox when using FlashPlayer 9 on Linux. To my knowledge it hasn't been resolved. I'll see if I can dig up the pertinent information.
 
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