BURN BILL GATES?

[Drunk Bob]

Internet Explorer seems to have come up with something extra nasty today,A popup that has no close button. <font color="red"> </font>

[blueboles]

Hold down 'alt' then press the 'f4' key.
Kelley

[adios]

I'd recommend Mozilla for a browser, it's easy to inhibit pop ups. Mozilla is free and you can download it from Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org)

[ACPlayer]

I just switched from IE to NS7.1 (based on Mozilla engine) and like it a lot. Specially like the tabs (i often have 3-5 open in the same NS window) that load in the background and the side bar.

I also suggest that everyone have a firewall, like ZoneAlarm which I use (spend the 40 dollars for Zone alarm pro), that inhibits pop-ups, pop-under, animated ads, banner ads etc.

[imported_Chuck Weinstock]

Tom,

If you don't use the e-mail or newsgroup functions of Mozilla, I recommend you consider Mozilla Firebird...which has those functions stripped out and is faster to load, etc.

Chuck

[adios]

Thanks Chuck, I don't use them so I'll give Firebird a test drive.

[Rick Nebiolo]

I like Mozilla and used to like Opera but they still have some problems so I only use them on occasion.

For a few days I've been fooling with the Avant browser. It actually is a feature packed shell that fits over Internet Explorer so it uses the MS IE engine. This means you keep your bookmarks/favorites and bookmarks added under Avant will show up in MS IE. You can read reviews at download.com by clicking on this link:

http://download.com.com/3000-2356-10235902.html?tag=lst-0-1

or check out the web page at http://www.avantbrowser.com/.

I tried the similar MS IE shell called Slim Browser but this one seems to work better so far.

Regards,

Rick

[Vehn]

Get the google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com). End of problem.

[adios]

Lot's of good info here so far. Since we're roasting Billy so to speak I was think it might be useful and fun to discuss alternatives to other MSFT products. Like everyone uses MS Office but Open Office is an alternative and of course on Intel machines we've got Linux with a suitable Windowing environment available too. Not sure about the status of Linux drivers for all devices as I know Windows is well supported but I would guess Linux is too. For software developers there's open software languages like GNU. I'm seriously considering an Apple of some sort for my next machine. I don't really like being locked into one vendor, the security problems with Windows and the rest of the problems often brought up about version 1.0 software and such (I don't really want to trash MSFT for some personal reasons) make me want to get out of the Wintel mode. I've used Open Office some but not sure yet. I don't really use very many of the numerous features that Word offers because I'm too unmotivated to go through a learning curve. I use more Excel features but I haven't tapped into that many there either. Wouldn't mind having easy to use and learn tools that have some power and sophistication as well.

[Ray Zee]

only problem with other vendors is that they arent sure to be compatable with future msft stuff. no sense finding out down the road you cant open your files.

[adios]

I'd point out that their is some defacto standardazation in documents with formats like the Adobe PDF format and even HTML. Open Office is available for free and can read Office type documents. Not sure what the status is regarding input and output formats Open Office supports. Graphics have several widely supported formats and we all know about music and MP3. I'm fairly certain I can live at least fairly comfortably in a non MSFT environment at least eventually.

[Ray Zee]

i think you can too. but i remember when i used word perfect. i couldnt take anything anywhere as everyone had to have it in word to work on it. maybe they could do it but the fact is they wouldnt. so it seems to me rather than fight it join. its not something you can get anadvantage with just something to make a point.