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HP to Install Netscape on all new PCs
TJ Parisi writes "News.com is reporting that HP / Compaq will begin to install all PCs sold in the US and Canada with Netscape. Users will be prompted with the option to set either Netscape or IE as the default browser." From the article: "The agreement, which the companies are set to announce Monday, is the first browser distribution deal with a major PC maker since the end of the browser wars in the 1990s, according to Netscape, a division of Time Warner's America Online subsidiary."
I guess they aren't worried about Netscape anymore.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
You know, HP, it's hard to market a computer as "fast" or "productive" whenever it's bogged down with excessive pre-installed software. I'm sure that Netscape will also be set to load at startup with everything else that's installed, eh?
Why not install Firefox? Netscape is just a UI clusterf**k of what Netscape was. This will make people go " see.. see.. alternative browsers just suck! ".. *Sigh*
Tell me what you believe...I'll tell you what you should see.
Wow, its good to see HP getting with the times... the times being 1991...
Netscape is about seven years late. I want to understand why they didn't do something like this when they were battling M$ in an anti-trust lawsuit. Well, yea it makes sense. You can't do something and go to court saying that your competitor is doing a similar thing at the same time. Gotta wait till 2005
I would be suspicious. I can't tell you how much AOL crapware I had to uninstall and/or purge from the registry when I bought a Dell (don't). The fact that AOL has Netscape now would just make me wonder...
Just give me IE. I guarantee the first two pages I'll visit are mozilla.org and opera.com. Then, no more IE. No crapware for me!
blah blah blah
That's like asking someone to choose between two pieces of excrement. Why not a choice between Opera and Firefox instead?
web design experiments
Wrong browser.
"We specifically chose the Netscape browser because od its ability to run both the Triton (IE) and Gecko (Firefox) rendering engines" Sounds like a smart move on part of HP. Does opera allow choosing multiple rendering engines?
I'm surprised HP chose Netscape over Firefox. What was the rationale behind their decision?
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
This is good news; I'm guessing that the threat of HP making a BIG fuss will stop Microsoft from changing any of the OS discounts that HP get. Even if Netscape isn't used; the fact that the icon is there is good; The netscape icon represents another way to view the internet... too many people right now think IE IS the internet. Just that slight change in perception is a start.
Im so happy Netscape is being preinstalled. Opera or Netscape would have been a significant choice
Great! Now users can use Netscape instead of Explorer to navigate to www.getfirefox.com
Don't worry! Microsoft will buy AOL so they'll win no matter what the customers choose.
Best Buy can have you arrested
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
I never stopped using Netscape but I fear this will not bring back many users. The users who care will switch to Firefox or Opera. The rest will use what they use at the office which for most of use is IE. This is like buying a computer that comes with Corel WordPerfect. It is better than Office but if it is free it can't be any good.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
This may have been a coup 6 or 7 years ago, but this is a waste of bandwidth on today's internet.
H-Paq is a company on its way down.
Netscape lost the war and continues to lose market share even to its own offspring.
Sounds to me like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for any press coverage they can drum up. Cuz god knows you can't download and install it yourself. And the OS doesn't have its own default-browser setting menus. Oh wait, you can. And it does.
WHY? Let me ask it a different way: good god, why?!?
/. article recently about them firing all of their good engineers? Obviously, there's almost no one left with brains left at HP, at least not in whatever department choose to make this idiotic decision.
I used netscape back during the 4.0 days, when it was the best browser available for Linux. Even then, I hated it.
Now, there are SOOO many better browsers. Frankly, IE with active X disabled is better than netscape. Firefox beats them both. For Linux, there's konqueror (and firefox as well). I use a combination of Firefox/Camino/Safari under OS X. There is not ONE scenario under which I would use Netscape.
Why wouldn't they do a bundle with Firefox? Or Opera, now that it's 100% free.
Netscape's time has come and gone. There are much better IE alternatives available now.
Then again, HP is not exactly on the leading edge of tech anymore. Some would say they haven't been for quite some time... wasn't there a
That being said, I am happy to see anything that detracts from IE marketshare. Not because I hate MS (although I do to a degree), but only because I think that competition forces innovation. Look at how things were in the 90s when IE and Netscape were battling it out, we saw all kind of changes in the browser software. Hopefully we'll see something that like occur again.
Only time will tell.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
You know, lately HP seems to be wanting to partner with anyone to help unseat MS. I mean they made the deal to put iTunes on all their computers, not sure if they're still doing so. And now this. I mean I can't say I mind at all... but it's just funny to see. Oh well the more people we have using something other than IE, even if it's Netscape, the better.
Netscape 8 is based on Firefox, but lets users switch between both the Firefox and IE browser engines.
Keep this in mind. This is Netscape 8, possibly the ugliest browser out there. It uses Firefox's rendering engine (Gecko), but also has the ability to use IE's rendering engine if needed.
FTA:
Netscape 8 is based on Firefox, but lets users switch between both the Firefox and IE browser engines.
So now IE is still kind of the default browser -- when the site doesn't render properly, they will just switch the rendering engine to IE and go on like normal. It resolves nothing, as websites are not encouraged to fix their bugs.
Links:
Netscape Browser 8
Screenshot of Netscape Browser 8 -- The goggles! They do nothing!
Details on Netscape 8 UI Flaws
Other than Firefox?
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
... for 1997. Do they have a secret plan to offer Firefox in 2026?
...What's netscape?
. . . wait, I hate those jokes.
Netscape is a AOL product and I am sure AOL is paying HP to put a copy of Netscape on every PC. The Mozilla Foundation could never afford that kind of deal.
AOL does not have financial ties to any other browser, this will be a paid off add tie in with AOL I am guessing
The browser wars is something that really shouldn't of happened.
SHOULDN'T *HAVE*!!!
Yes, but the browser wars were started because Netscape got uppity and played 'chicken' with Microsoft. Andreesen got up on the stage and started hyping web applications as if it would replace Microsoft. This 'woke up the bear' who then went on a rampage. Which is NOT to excuse Microsoft, just to point out Netscape wasn't the 'good guy' either.
Remember, Netscape hoped to own the web. They were the ones who first started introducing non-standard tags and features that only their server technology could serve up to their browser. They were NOT the good guys, just one of the elephants fighting in the commons and stomping on the little guys.
resigned
Netscape inludes firefox rendering, and you can easily set it during install/1st config to never use IE engine.
Why Netscape? AOL has the clout to make the deal and support Netscape for free. If HP will install it, they must have some support for problems. With Netscape, they can pass the buck to AOL. That and they probably needed the nudge.
As for MS, they just lost re: netscape and antitrust so they aren't going to openly oppose this.
This is very good news as many people simply use the browser that comes with their PC. They may have heard about Netscape and Firefox, but they probably will never download it.
If it's on their PC, they will probably try it and hopefully use it.
Having a non IE browser installed by default with the PC is the best way to increase market share.
Hopefully this will pressure other manufacturers to follow suit.
Ryan
Please return RH7.1 and generally consider to stop robbing musemus.
I think this is actually a step in the right direction for computers. I mean we're geeks, so we know about Linux and alternate browsers, etc... but the regular home user still lives ignorant of anything outside of the Microsoft Box. At least something different is being done.
HP systems also come with Sun's Java virtual machine and a Sun JVM updater installed, which is a pleasant surprise as compared to the nonsense software you usually see bundled with PCs.
"Fools!" cried their second in command, who most resembled Uncle Fester. He then made a great commotion with chairs in his office and moaned like a Wildebeast, "I will KILL NETSCAPE! I have done it before and I will do it again."
And he laughed a cruel laugh as he ordered his Developers to craft all manner of Evil for Netscape. "My master says this is His Platform and none can compete therein. HP shall be punished and blamed for their insolence." Before a single unit was shipped the trap was laid.
So the New XP, according to it's master's instructions, reported the offenders who dared challenge the The Browser and there was a great plague on device drivers for the unfortunate users and other dependents.
For Yeah, HP had not learned the Digital Research Lesson, and though they slew their own son, the Beast of Redmond is impossible to satisfy without perfect Obedience.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Netscape 8 works with more sites because it switches to the IE engine when it tries to display a site that's known not to work with Gecko. Many users aren't going to put up with Firefox if it has problems with major sites, such as their bank. Of course, this makes Netscape 8 a security nightmare, because it combines all the vulnerabilities of Gecko and IE. That ought to keep the anti-virus and anti-adware companies happy, though.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
"a division of Time Warner-America Online-Netscape-HBO-Turner Broadcasting Systems-New Line Cinema-Time Inc-"! :/
Excellent...
Yes, I got that. What I mean is, when the window for the selection comes up, will one of them already be selected? Will one say (recommended)? Or will they both be unselected by default to actually force a user to choose before blindly hitting "Next", "Next", "Next".
Netscape did, in a number of ways, own the web. Then Microsoft cheated like a bitch on the *SERVER* wars, by claiming that you couldn't run Netscape server on anything less than Microsoft NT server, and look! The server edition came with IIS already present. The proven-in-court and proven in performance fact that the only differences between NT server and NT client were 2 registry entries, the presence of IIS, a bunch of bloatware that no one used, and about $500 in price, helped cement Netscape server's fate. After you've spent $500 for NT server, you're not going to pony up another $500 for Netscape server.
Unfortunately, Netscape's only feature that was worth paying for instead of, say, Apache, was their calendar server. That got bought by Stettor as Netscape gave up and went out of business, Oracle then went and bought Stettor, and the Stettor calendar server has basically not had a usable patch in 3 years as Oracle wasted their time integrating it on top of an Oracle back-end that it didn't need.
You might want to try SeaMonkey. It's like Netscape 7.2 without all the commericial stuff added in, plus over a year of security updates and bug fixes.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
geezus god; how many times do you have to copy and paste this shit and sit there waiting for someone with -good- points to respond to it so you can flame them and get more karma i've seen the same one about 5 times
"who analy raped netscape when i wasent looking? seriously i used it in 1997 and it was good but every new version just seems more bloated and slow"
That sounds more like marriage than anal rape.
"Derp de derp."
Since they are installing IE and a second browser anyway, they could have installed Firefox as the default browser with the "IE View" extension. Then the user would have a good browser, AND be able to use the IE engine at will. Heck, they could even easily set specific pages to use the IE engine by default while getting Firefox for everything else.
Now if they'd just refrain from installing all the other crap like Easy Internet Setup, 30 WildTangent Spywa^h^h^h^h^hGames, Compaq Control Center, Crippled AntiVirus, and 3 Day Trial MS Office.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
So what if Microsoft DOES buy AOL as has been rumored last month?
These guys are going for the crash so bad it hurts.