IE 7
First a friend of mine reported that upgrading to Messenger Live so completely screwed up his e-mail he couldn’t even tell if he had new messages, much less read them. He even went so far as to call tech support and even they couldn’t fix it. Weeks later when he finally managed to get in all his messages had been erased.
Second I get a call from my mom claiming that a mandatory upgrade care of Automatic Update had ‘upgraded’ her to IE 7 and now her browser wouldn’t work.
Given that these two ‘improvements’ came out around the same time and Microsoft’s propensity for tying it’s programs and services together in completely useless, irritating, and processor-intense ways I was not encouraged.
Now back in the day I was the first to get a browser upgrade but latest ‘advances’ such as the highly over-rated tabbed browsing left me wondering who these changes benefited. I mean tabbed browsing is the same as opening different windows except you can’t alt+tab between them and they don’t show up on the menu bar. Same as before but with less functionality? Where do I send the fan mail?
Anyways, it turns out my mother’s issues were a result of her Yahoo! Toolbar (seriously people, who uses/needs this thing?).
If for no other reason than to bone up on it to provide future tech support I decided to upgrade to IE 7 myself. Now I’ve been through various versions of Netscape and IE over the years and I’ve always keep both around because invariably they both have different strengths and work better than the other when doing certain things.
Before installing IE 7 the status quo was that IE 6 loaded quicker and handled simple and secure pages very quickly, I used it mostly for E-mail and visiting sites I didn’t really want to go to such as work-related pages or links forced upon me by friends. For the meatier stuff like torrents and my blog Netscape was the place for me. Also if I needed to delve into the shadier parts of the net it’s pop up controls were better and easier to use.
Well IE 7 is growing on me fast. It still loads quickly but also handles blogging and message boards a little better than Netscape. In fact it’s quickly becoming the case that I only use Netscape to download stuff as it’s much more user-friendly and controllable in that regard. It doesn’t tell me what to do or take actions without my consent like arrogant programs by Microsoft like to.
So despite my lingering reluctance to even try Messenger Live I can endorse upgrading to IE 7 at least, so long as you don’t have stupid redundant toolbars I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
I still hate tabbed browsing though.
