Dave’s posterous

I usually avoid Internet Explorer as much as possible and use Firefox instead.  However, I have many clients who either prefer it over other browsers or are forced to use it by corporate IT staffs or IE only web pages.

Therefore, with the introduction of a new version I have to install it in order to support it.  Since I had five questions this weekend about it, I figured now was the time.  All went smoothly, being very careful to thoroughly read question posed to avoid being tricked into selections and services I did not want.  At one point I was very surprised when IE8 offered to import my bookmarks from the two other browsers I have installed, Safari and Firefox.  This was new for Microsoft, acknowledging that there were other browsers out there.  Usually, the closest they get to that is encouraging you to switch to IE as the default browser with other Microsoft services as the defaults.  I thought, "What the heck.  Sure import my Firefox bookmarks to IE's favorites."  When I checked the box to do that and hit continue it crashed.

Fortunately, I am heavily backed up and it did not take too long to recover.  Of course I also have the luxury of not paying for my own time.  I don't have time today to repeat that exercise so for the time being IE8 will remain unused and in whatever state it is still in.  So the caveat remains to make sure everything critical is backed up before you attempt this upgrade.  I'd appreciate hearing about your experiences.

I have a very nice free program that scans your computer and tells you which programs have updates available.  Adopting the philosophy of "If it ain't broken, don't fix it!" I'm not disseminating the details unless you ask.  There are several reasons for this.  If you are having a problem with a particular program just update or remove that program.  When I last ran the update availability program on my machine, 15 updates were recommended.  Immediately, I saw a few problems.  One was not compatible with my current OS.  One is a known really buggy update.  One would over overwrite a perfectly functional version of a free program with a newer one that must be paid for.  This Program is very handy but should not be used with gay abandon.  Each update should be considered carefully before installation.  If you want to know about it, let me know.

Finally, if you are a myrmidon that updates your Norton or McAfee protections without question annually, please note that both programs have dropped out of the top ten for that functionality.  In my humble opinion Norton/Symantec has not turned out decent products since 2003.  Great marketing and legal departments though. :-(             See these two sites.  http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/    http://anti-spyware-review.toptenreviews.com/

Dave out