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Firefox vs. SP2's IE?

Posted by Cliff on from the as-microsoft-slowly-improves-their-products dept.

Anonymous Coward asks: "I was at my grandpa's house today, and I came across a somewhat unsettling issue. He is a user of Internet Explorer. I was talking about Firefox with him, and it turns out that he has had no trouble with popups since SP2 came out, he doesn't multitask enough to benefit from tabbed browsing, and he doesn't care about safety/privacy concerns. On top of that, I ran a test and found no difference in load/download speeds between the two browsers on his computer. This brought me to an interesting point. For someone like him, is there any benefit to be gained from using Firefox? On top of that, are there any people who are actually better off sticking with IE?"

5 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Security/Privacy issues by rogueuk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The way I see it, if you don't care about security or privacy issues, then I don't think that there is a real reason for you to switch if you aren't going to benefit from any of the other enhancements that Firefox brings

    However, once you get nailed with some bug/virus that exploits an IE security hole, then you will probably care enough to switch

  2. In the big scheme of things... by erykjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would say it makes no difference which browser you use if you do not keep up with all the security updates for the browser and/or OS.

  3. He's not alone on the net... by AlexeiMachine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If he becomes infected with a virus or a trojan that transforms his PC in a spam zombie, he then becomes a threat/nuisance/liability to others.

    He might not care if he's infected with a bunch of crapware, but if his PC gets zombified and participates in criminal activities, he might object to that.

    At least make sure he doesn't run MSIE as an Administrator on his PC.

  4. Of course he doesn't care about security... by dscho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... because whenever something bad happens, he'll expect you to fix it!

    1. Re:Of course he doesn't care about security... by TheCarp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is why when the issue comes up with people I know I tell them this:

      "You can do what you want, but I recomend you use firefox, if you continue to use IE I will refuse to help you when your computer gets infected with viruses"

      That said, everyone that I have had try firefox has loved it and begun using it exclusivly. Normally I just say "here let me do some setup for you", install firefox, take ie off the desktop and the start menu, and then explain the new web browser to them. Often I just tell them "I upgraded your web browser, its called firefox now"

      I know to you or I this sounds very deceptive, but I realised something: its just abstraction. Forget the details of code base and who puts it out. I believe firefox is a better browser, these people don't even know what a "web browser" is. Thats why its called "The Internet" on the desktop shortcut and not "IE" - because "IE" or "firefox" is more detail than most people want.

      If you try to tell them "I installed firefox, this is what to use now because ie is bad", then you have a few problems.

      1. They don't know what you are talking about anyway so they are scared

      This means they worry "oh god is this going to be harder to use?" You can try to tell them its not, but they wont believe you because they saw you do all these weird things and so they know your idea of easy and theirs is way different.

      2. They may have used ie before and s far as they are concerned it is great. So when you say "its bad" (or however else you want to qualify or expound upon that) it doesn't jive with their experience, so they assume its just stuff they don't need to care about, or you are just being esoteric...they go back to point 1 and figure this is going to make their life harder for benefits that mean nothing to them anyway.

      So all in all, you save both your you alot of trouble by abstracting away "firefox" and "ie" and just going to "I upgraded your web browser" and when they sa y "whats that?" you say "Your internet is better and more secure"

      And yes I am being a little bit flip here, with my phrases but I also hate doing windows support and using it for anything other than gaming (tho it is fairly usable with a link to the cygwin port of X in the startup and xterm on the launcher menu)

      -Steve

      -Steve

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"