Why have I not blogged this before? No idea. Anyway, several people have recently got in touch looking for help after their computer has been hit by all manner of spyware, adware and other junk. I totally sympathise with these people (and help where I can). The time has come to face up to the fact that Internet Explorer and Outlook Express simply do not cut it as productivity-enhancing tools. Once, when no-one else was really innovating and Netscape had been pulped, they were adequate, but these days they just leave you vulnerable, in line for loss of data and general pain.
The solution? One big step in the right direction is a move to the wonderful Mozilla products Firefox, for browsing, and Thunderbird for email. If you think the open source community involves beards and having no social graces, this is your wake up call. These products are professional, solid, polished and developing actively to include useful features for the user -- that's you, me, them, everybody.
Firefox is set to auto-block pop-ups, so wave goodbye to annoying adverts for casinos and body alterations to please every girl/guy you ever meet. Plus all that spyware code that fills your computer, slows things down and redirects your start page to a.n.other.com site become a thing of the past. Add in tabbed browsing, and real standards compliance, which means you'll actually see this site in its true glory, and you're on to a winner.
This is my browser of choice, and I know how to browse, believe me. Sure, there are a few times you need to flick back to IE to see a certain site, but these times are becoming fewer as the days go by, and as Web developers wake up to the fact that making a site that purely works in IE is idiotic, but that's a whole 'nother discussion (see here and here for two reasons that immediately spring from my aggregator).
Thunderbird is the Mozilla email client, and just as Firefox leads the way in browsing, Thunderbird is the boy for email. All those viruses and junk that hits Outlook Express users? Doesn't touch Thunderbird. All those spam messages OE happily displays for you? Thunderbird uses a built-in filter that learns to consign them to the bin.
Moving all your mail over to Thunderbird is a cinch, so what are you waiting for?
Comments
And .... it is fast, super stable, and, as Martin mentioned, offers tabbed browsing.
Still not as good as Safari, though :)
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