Internet Exploder

I've more or less abandoned Internet Explorer 7. Why? Because the hateful thing has been driving me nuts for weeks, with its temper tantrums, snail's pace browsing speed and frequent crashes. Mozilla's Firefox is now my default browser, although I don't totally trust it for online transactions. Despite Firefox's claims to be a safer browser, it has had a lot of vulnerability issues recently. But for regular web surfing, it's far more stable than IE7, which frequently refuses to connect to websites that are readily viewable in Firefox. Sadly, there are still far too many web designers who think Internet Explorer is the only browser in the world, and their sites don't display properly in Firefox. Still, it's a small price to pay for the added stability. Plus it has hundreds of useful free add-ons and extensions, that IE simply doesn't have.

If you haven't already tried it, give it a go. It's a small download, and a very easy browser to get used to. Plus you can import all your IE bookmarks into Firefox. Get it here. And don't forgot to check out all the cool add-ons.

Mozilla also provides a free email program, Thunderbird, which is a lot more secure and spam-free than Outlook Express. I rarely use it, despite it being a very good program, as I've become very attached to Windows Live Mail Desktop, and can't be bothered to import everything over into Thunderbird. If you fancy giving it a go, it's available here.