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Dell Pre-Installing Firefox in UK
seizer writes "Blake Ross, creator of Firefox, has confirmed on his blog that Dell are now shipping Firefox on all desktop and laptop machines in the UK. While rumours had been floating around before this, and UK buyers had been reporting that 1.0.6 came pre-installed, this is the first official confirmation of Dell's decision. Is the US next?"
That'll teach those bastards.
Definately good news, but if it's not the default browser the impact will likely be limited. Most people will use whatever's the default.
Shouldn't they ship it with the latest version at least... oh well still a step in the good direction.. but I doubt they remove IE on the system...
I suppose this is a step in the right direction. When I got my laptop. The first thing I did was remove any trace of MSIE (short of uninstalling it) and installed Firefox. I'm sure this will help with XP security. I just wonder how much this is gonna piss of MS and how they are gonna strike back. We shall see.
Anyone seen the version? is it with a custom dell skin? just currious.
Is Dell going to be giving free memory upgrades and tech support for laptops with Firefox preinstalled? Notice that they are not installing 1.5?
Inside the corporate offices of Microsoft, an angel dies.
The prisoner of hope is sustained and encouraged by his hope, even as he is confined by it.
Wait and see if a hurricaine hits Britain next year. Billy Boy will say that it was God punishing the sinful, wicked infidels.
If Dell is going to buck Microsoft and install Firefox, perhaps the day is coming when they will openly and consistently offer Linux on their desktop machines as an alternative to Windows. But we will see. Something tells me MS isn't going to take this lying down.
Yeah, when it's on an AMD 64 system. Until I'll keep hitting the Snooze on Dell related articles.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A wee bit behind the times no?
Doesn't 1.0.6 have known problems? Is Dell shipping security risks now?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This will do wonders for Firefox's reputation.
I surf with Opera. I like it that way. I guess adding Firefox is slightly better than some demo software crap that I can pay to buy into, but only marginally. Dear Peter, leave the crap off my system and let me decide what to install and give me REAL os media so I can clean my system to my liking.
...and now the uninformed masses will forever call Firefox 'bloatware' Thanks Dell!
-Is it installed like the rest of their nagware? (e.g. buried in the menus)
-Is it the default browser?
-Will it remain the default browser?
-Is there an icon on the desktop? (still will probably not switch the trained to click the "e" people.)
In one way it's very good news.
I don't think it changes much though once IE7 is available. The IE7 hype for a feature set that Mozilla browsers already have will be deafening.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
... is the day when software bundles is a Good Thing!
(err, right?)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I don't think it really matters since end users can soon buy CDs that contains Firefox and openoffice.org at retail stores according to this story at newsforge. http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/12/09/16 44221.shtml?tid=132
this is the first official confirmation of Dell's decision.
An official confirmation would be somebody from Dell confirming it. Since Dell are free to bundle Firefox without a special agreement being made with Mozilla.org, people from Mozilla.org can't officially confirm it.
Not that I think it's not being done, I just think it's pretty stupid to call this an official confirmation.
The UK is the second greatest market for both Slashdot and Dell, so reporting this only makes sense.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
perhaps the day is coming when they will openly and consistently offer Linux on their desktop machines
Well, in case Dell is listening, I am one customer for a Dell laptop with Linux pre-installed (the model that has nVidia graphics, as ATI is totally hopeless with OpenGL).
I always install my own Linux systems on desktops, but laptops are somewhat different to desktops in that they often have custom features that aren't covered well (or at all) by standard Linux distros.
A Dell Linux-based laptop with all its hardware features supported would be a very welcome product.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
This is just not true.
You can order a Dell without an OS. At least in the US.
If Dell does this all over the world it will have a large impact on IE browser numbers. This is the single largest reason IE/Windows has the largest install base. Think how good Firefox needed to be to get people to take the time and download, install and use over IE. Now it is there by default? Man that will be powerful.
Perhaps the new PC could prmopt the user at first login to choose clients for the various protocols. Thunderbird could be available as an alternative to Outlook Express, and some alternatives to the commercial chat programs could also be available. I like that idea.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
Ok, so just don't use it and cool down.
I, for one, am outraged. Could you imagine if Microsoft did the same thing and had Internet Explorer installed on every new computer?
Oh wait...
Martini Glasses
You misunderstood, firefox is installed in addition to the inferior browser. IE is still shipping as it is "part of windows and cannot be removed" :-)
Now if we could just get them to preinstall OpenOffice.org, offer Linux as a real alternative OS, and (god forbid) even consider offering AMD based systems then we would really be making progress...
For those wondering why this particular version, it is the latest to support FULL msi options http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1380 33 as listed on the official mozillazine forums.
:)
However if the people at DELL had of just gone one more click to the guys full site, they would see the latest MSIs built ready for pre-install or corp rollout needs http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/.
Big thanks to "DraconPern" for doing this, OEMer i been working at has been rolling this onto default install for around 14 months now, not had one gripe about bloatware, and quite a few thankyous from people for saveing them the effort
...
Inside the corporate offices of Microsoft, a chair is thrown.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
give me easy adblock for opera linux, and I'm game.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Thanks for the info. Didn't know this. How recent was this?
You can order a Dell without an OS. At least in the US.
You can, but it costs more than the same computer with Windows.
I set up a bunch of new Dell laptops and set Firefox to be the default browser.
Much to my chagrin, McAfee (which is pre-installed) has a self-update is almost entirely ActiveX/javascript dependent. It loads about 10 pages in succession, which is rather strange. Even though it "fell down went boom" about 80% of the time in IE because McAfee's servers were continuously overloaded or down (thus resulting IE error pages which you can't continue from- you have to hit 'update' again and wait another 5-10 minutes.)
The incompetence in the decision to use complex ActiveX/javascript bouncing off 10 different pages and a couple webservers...just to check for effing definition updates...is astounding. Do they really not have anyone capable of writing a decent simple Windows 2k/XP program?
Please help metamoderate.
..back in the day, computers came with Netscape and MSIE installed. You'd see infomercials saying, "This computer comes with the two leading internet browsers. Netscape and Internet Explorer, so that you can choose which you'd like to use". It will just start bringing more competition to the table for MSIE. I feel bad because I remember in those days recommending that people uninstall Netscape and use IE.
Sig: I stole this sig.
When I first saw this article a few days ago, I remembered that a clients dell that I ordered for them turned up with firefox on it already. It was out of date but still very surprising. Shame there is sooo much other bloatware that takes ages to remove.
And I for one welcome our browser overlords !!
Any prediction?
When I sell a machine, I install the latest version of Windows, firefox, WinAMP, Norton AV, and OO.o (unless they "upgrade" to MS Office) and set firefox & WinAMP as defaults. I also offer a "bonus" CD with competing products such as Opera, RealPlayer, MusicMatch, and iTunes, and clear, conside directions on how a user would uninstall the software on the computer and replace it with what's on the CD. I also make sure the latest patches, updates, drivers, and virus definitions are installed.
Of course, I also sell linux boxes priced at the cost of Windows and Norton less than the Windows boxes. For those I just deliver the machine completely clean.
Free MacMini
They've got the same system with XP media center for $20 less.. Tell me again how there's no "Microsoft tax". http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?CS=19&kc=19&oc=DE510SAP
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Looks like people are beginning to realize the benifits of open source technology. For a while people were very cautious about it. FInally the end of Internet Explorer seems a possibility!
i doubt that's the case, as microsoft and/or the eu would likely make some kind of announcement, since would pertain to litigation, and really, the question of browsers has nothing to do with the litigation at hand, BUT, it's not outside the realm of possibilities
What is so good about Firefox?
Extensions.
I tried Opera 8.5 for about a week, and while versus Firefox without extensions there would be no contest, there were just too many things I could not acheive in Opera, that Firefox extensions provide. Opera was fast and stable though.
It's a unfortunate that extensions are also a bit of a weak point for Firefox. It would be nice if the APIs for extensions were made robust enough that it was harder for extensions to break the browser, and I still haven't had a problem free browser upgrade without doing a clean reinstall.
Oh no... it's the future.
Right at the top of the Dell web page, "Dell recommends Windows® XP Professional".
I imagine that Dell's support costs for helping people remove spyware are ASTRONOMICAL. And, truly, using Firefox as your browser goes a LONG way towards preventing spyware from being installed. I mean, a lot (most?) spyware comes in the form of ActiveX controls.
I wonder if McAfee and Norton Internet Security are going to get the axe next? Both of those programs tend to be a major hassle, too. I've always been amazed that Dell would install those programs on every machine, when doing so almost GUARANTEES a support call. Or ten.
OS/2 Warp was pre-installed on the machines from large retailers (typically Escom or Vobis). This was almost one year before Windows 95 was released. We all know how that story ended.
OK, the configuration of OS/2 on those machines (often 486DX2 with 4MB of RAM) was particularly crappy, sharing a FAT partition with DOS and Windows 3.1, but all I'm saying is that pre-installation doesn't imply mass adoption yet.
Use privoxy. There is no reason to tie your ad-blocking to your browser.
Centralization breaks the internet.
If so, I don't think it'll make much difference to the number of firefox users, as most large firms I know, who buy from Dell, have IE only web sites and intranets. It will however boost the statistics for Firefox, viz. number of installations.
First Off, I love FireFox and use it every day, it's default on every computer I use except this one (damn you work!).
/.) proves what everyone says, Dell puts too much crap on their boxes. Well, now thier putting another browser there, albeit a better one. It's technically another thing we (consumers) don't need.
Anyway, to play Devils Advocate, does everyone see that this should be considered more bloatware from Dell? I mean, the HardOCP review of Dells gaming rig (last week on
I am probably going to get flamed for this post, but it has to be said. They put lots of programs that aren't needed on their computers and people bitch. Well, now thier putting another browser on there (again, I know its a better one) and everyone is happy.
I know it's a step in the right direction in general, but am I the only one who sees the majority of the previous posts as somewhat hypocritical?
If I want Windows (which I might), I'll purchase a Genuine Windows CD; uh, that is, when they get the x_64 version working. It's in Microsoft Beta - that is, what the rest of us would call Alpha. SuSE 10.0 did a better job of recognizing my hardware right "out of the box", while the XP x_64 not only missed two cards, but refused to install the vendor-supplied (32-bit) drivers for the cards.
So, just for my sins, I now have an AMD x_64 machine running a 64-bit aware OS with application code compiled to take advantage of x_64 architecture. This begs the question - why does <insert hardware vendor name> trundle a 32-bit OS with 64-bit hardware?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dell is playing with fire. Don't get me wrong I really like that they are installing Firefox, and hope it makes it to the US soon. But is it wise to slap the hand that feeds you? MS's support is one of the reasons Dell was able to undercut HP and become number one. Dell also got big support from Intel for rejecting AMD. Out of the two players to piss off I would think piss Intel would be a better move since everyone is going to HP/Sun to get some 64 bit opterons.
On the flip side HP has been warming up to MS with things like supporting HDDVD and MS/Disney tech over the HP/Java tech.
- most of firefox features were in Opera first and
- Opera has features that will take years to be implemented in firefox and
- Opera's mail client was gmail like before gmail even existed and
- Opera is faster and has a smaller memory footprint than firefox and
- Opera is beautifully designed and integrated instead of being a patchwork frankenbrowser and
- Opera's download is smaller
slashdoters will still not love it. Why? Because Opera is not open source. Therefore, although most people won't ever modify Firefox's code, it will forever remain everyone's sweetheart.Firefox is not just a browser, it is a symbol of rebelion against the system. We should rename it the Ché-wser and make t shirts!
Cheers,
Adolfo
Opera user since forever.
We can very easily see that you're a zealot. You haven't said a single thing about why Opera is better than Firefox (and I personally don't believe that's true, both have things going for them).
Come on Opera is the best.
Why? You certainly haven't told us. Your saying so won't convince anyone.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
But is it wise to slap the hand that feeds you?
We'll find out if Microsoft tries anything. Dell sells a huge volume of servers and other computers to businesses, and if they really threw their hat in the ring in regards to Linux (or even Open Office!) it could actually make a dent in Microsoft.
There used to be a lot more players in the market in regards to windows box purchases but Dell is really a leader in the market now, and tough for Microsoft to really influence as much anymore.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because they know people are stupid enough to think the AMD64 is magically faster even with a 32-bit OS.
:-)
It's true that the AMD64 is faster than the AMD32 [e.g. K7 Athlon-XP series] with 32-bit code. However, to get the most out of it you really need to be in Long mode.
But 99% of the public doesn't get that. They think because the chip is 64-bit it means it's faster.
This is why they say things like "128-bit graphics processor" when they mean "higher latency wider data bus"
And don't get me going on latency vs. throughput.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
...Tech Support
Spyware/viruses/etc. can quickly make IE unusable. Having firefox preinstalled gives the user a backup browser to access the internet.
Now when IE gets hosed, tech support can still send users to support.dell.com or off to download anti-virus/anti-spyware software.
Uhm.. forgive me for being stupid here, but doesnt a 64 bit os require... 64bit drivers? Sure they may work with 32bit but unless its been made to support windows XP64 then i dont see how you can complain when a non certified non compatible bit of software doesnt work with a new OS.
"A Dell Linux-based laptop with all its hardware features supported would be a very welcome product."
:)
Yes! Then I could wipe it and install OpenBSD on it and still have a chance of the additional laptop-specific hardware working (or being easily hackable)!
If only Dell had the balls to actually do it...
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
Inside Soviet Microsoft, chairs get thrown at the angels.
(And they hit them this time apparently. Ballmer's been practicing, watch out.)
Remember Xenix? That didn't lead to mass adoption either.
12:50 - press return.
Dell is a company, and as such, is a SINGULAR NOUN. Usage rules dictate that singular nouns are incompatible with plural verbs. Would you say "My mom are going to the store?" Of course not. Why, then, would you say "Dell are now shipping" ?
Learn some fucking English, people.
Learn to accept different regional usages. Where I come from, saying 'Dell are' is standard usage: 'Dell' is a collective noun and can be treated as a plural.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1.5 is out now and 1.0.7 was out before that.
I know 1.5 crashes on me while 1.0.7 does not but its more standards compliant and more secure. They could use a more recent version.
http://saveie6.com/
I'd like to think that this would be a wake-up call to the other big PC companies... but then again, I'm an idealist.
I know, deep inside me, there's a Linux nut just waiting to be let out.
I'm sure someone will correct me if this is not the case, but I believe in the Queen's English (as opposed to American English), organizations are often represented in the plural because they are a group of people. You will read a US headline that says "Manchester United is likely to sell to Glazer", but in the UK, it can be "Manchester United are likely to sell to Glazer". Check out this site. Given the English source for the story, this makes sense.
Dell isn't my favorite vendor, but one of the biggest obstacles to desktop (and even moreso, laptop) Linux is the difficulty of getting everything working. If it came pre-installed, perhaps customized for a specific hardware platform, a lot more people would use it.
This obviously doesn't apply to big IT departments that use a standard image for all PCs. But it would help home and small business users, most of whom don't install their own OS.
Perhaps you are right, and they may save on calls for spyware infections. But think how many calls they will get from people complaining about web pages that don't work - because of lack of ActiveX, or just simply that the page doesn't work with anything but IE (like my stupid bank).
It seems to me that this isn't obviously a good idea. Add on the risk of annoying Microsoft, and it seems downright silly. I wonder why in the world Dell would do this.
Somewhat ironically, my Linux laptop experience has actually regressed with my latest laptop over some previous ones. My last one was still APM-only, no ACPI junk, and all the various sleep and hibernation features worked great. My newest one is ACPI-only, "legacy free", and I've still never had it survive a sleep/wake cycle. Kind of a shame, I've gotten everything else working great. I've been using Gentoo on it; one of these days I may try Fedora or SuSE and see if it picks anything up better.
I'd love a fully vendor-supported Linux laptop, if it was done properly.
But to answer your comment re: complaint. It's been a long time coming - the time when x_86 would have 64-bit wide implementation, to match SPARC, POWER and PA-RISC (to name a few).
Why is Microsoft the last to catch up? AND . . . if the hardware is now running with a 64-bit bus and architecture, wouldn't it behoove hardware manufacturers to trundle up a software package appropriate to the hardware? Or does M$ have such a stranglehold on <insert hardware manufacturer name here> that they have no choice but to trundle up an inappropriate OS/Software mix? This is sort of like giving away a free tank of gasoline with the purchase of an all electric car, because the auto dealer has an agreement with the petroleum company to push their brand of gasoline.
Why would you provide two citations about a phrase that you subsequently misuse? What a dick.
If I didn't someone would get anal on me and do it. I'm just keeping it informal.
"There is no reason to tie your ad-blocking to your browser."
Except that nagging fact that ad-blocking is only relevant to browsing activities. What the fuck else are you getting ads from?
Windowsupdate.com is probably the only useful site that actually needs IE, so an update that turned IE back on would be redundant.
Microsoft could alter WindowsUpdate so that it didn't depend on ActiveX, or someone could develop an extension that made ActiveX work with Firefox. But MS doesn't have any incentive for the former, and the latter would be a huge security risk.
I'm putting that pretty poorly, but I know that running a 32-bit OS means that both the OS and applications running under it limits me to 32-bit (and some pseudo 64-bit) style operations. Even if an app is compiled for x_64, it will suffer under a 32-bit wide OS.
Ahhh . . . to hell with it. I'm firing up my old PC-XT. As some IBM exec once said, 640K should be enough for anybody.
You don't even have to pay to use it without adverts anymore!
This last statement answers the question why I found Firefox better than Opera. The primary reason I wanted to get away from IE was to get away from "in your face" advertising. And it appears you still have to purchase Opera to use it without adverts.
I'll accept that Opera is smaller and faster. But I don't accept that "best browser" is soley defined by being "smaller" and "faster" especially when they're given in non-meaningful terms.
Amusingly, this move may *hurt* the download statistics of Firefox, as more people get it for "free". Not to imply that less people use it though.
On the other hand, the browser usage stats could change significantly because of this policy.
. . . in a way.
Okay, so it's not exactly "working" in Firefox, per se, but you can use this extension to resolve the problem.
From experience as an American working in the UK, I've found the Brits to be 100% in bed with Microsoft. So this is pretty surprising, to say the least. Well, a good sign, and let's hope for more progress in this direction!
I used to be a big advocate of privoxy, before there was the adblock extension. Now I'm content with firefox. One thing I didn't really like about privoxy was that it was a bit hard to setup right and on a slow link it gave the impression that it blocks the pages.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
C'mon...... If Google bought Opera, I might consider using it :P
You're forgetting also that Firefox is a lot more hackable than Opera.
And that's not an open source vs closed source thing. That's just the inspired decision to have the browser be rendered by the web engine.
Thus, the hordes of folks familiar with CSS/HTML/Javascript can fairly easily transfer their skills into hacking Firefox/Mozilla using CSS/XUL/Javascript.
Heck. Don't like something in an extension? You can browse to the zip in your extensions folder, and tweak some css or js yourself with very little familiarity.
I was using Opera before I tried the first mozilla milestone, and while the UI has become more familiar, borrowing shamelessly from all the other browsers (as is right and proper) it still is no more hackable.
And hackable scores huge points over here.
Try Venkman and the DOM inspector some time on Mozilla - you may become addicted.
Yep. Much to my surprise, my dad's new Inspiron 1300 came with Firefox on the desktop
Default home page was google uk
bookmarks were dell and a coupla other weird OEM ones.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Your a fucking stupid Opera zealot, go and suck out mommy OH MOMMY OPERA IS THE BEST GOO GOO GAH GAH!
"But think how many calls they will get from people complaining about web pages that don't work - because of lack of ActiveX, or just simply that the page doesn't work with anything but IE (like my stupid bank)."
After using Firefox almost exclusively for over two years, I rarely have run into approxiamtely a dozen pages (out of tens of thousands) that didn't work because they were in Firefox.
It happens, but it is unlikely to create a call to Dell. If a bank's web application doesn't work, users usually call the bank, not Dell.
As for ActiveX, I don't think there aren't enough pages using ActiveX for Microsoft to even support it anymore.
I use more than one browser. I mainly use FireFox, but I also have Opera and IE. Also, I use SSH forwarding and use my home privoxy install whereever I am.
Centralization breaks the internet.
Blake Ross, creator of Firefox, has confirmed on his blog that Dell are now shipping Firefox on all desktop and laptop machines in the UK.
When was there more than one Dell? Dell is singular.
"Dell are" is gramattically incorrect. Dell has many people and other components; were you to say "the folks at Dell are" you would be right.
Your car has hundreds of thousands of parts, as well. Do you say "my car are broken?" You Brits sound like Lousiana Cajuns.
The Cajun Cook, Justin Wilson, told a story of the Cajun's son who went to college. The old man asked him when he came home for Spring break, "well, boy, what did ya larn?"
The kid thinks for a second and says "Pi R Square."
The old man looks at him in astonishment and says "what kind o' fool school did I send you to? Pie are round, cornbread are square!"
You are an idiot. "Dell are" is standard British. "Dell is" is standard American.
Back in the 80's, I was pushing MS on anything that was not IBM. Just about every geek, except for the CIS types, was fighting against IBM. Now, the CIS types push MS, and fight IBM.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Mod parent up.
This is the same thing that is keeping me on my Firefox. Yes, I realize that at each version it is becoming buggier and buggier, but until I can get my Web Developer toolbar on Opera, as well as an in-browser FTP and an easy to use Adblock-esque program, I will stick with my slightly-longer-too-load Firefox.
Although, if Opera did have the capability to have these extensions, and I used the Opera-equivelant extensions, it may be just as slow as Firefox.
What's a NetScape ??
They're identical except 1 thing: The video card. The WinXPMC PC offers an integrated card where the Open Source PC only offers ATI cards.
Having said that, the difference is only $30 and last I checked, the OEM of WINXPMC was quite a bit higher than that. So yes, there's still a tax, and no, it's not as high as it looked at first.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Sir,
:|
I am not normally moved to put pen to paper these days, but I feel I ought to make an exception for your folly. I shall keep it simple, for it is clear that you are of a reactionary bent and I fear that a lengthy response might be a little too much for your poor little brain, triggering what I believe is termed a "buffer overflow".
I like to count myself amongst those of a gramatically Naziist persuasion, but I am always mindful of one golden rule - the central tenet of pointing out the mistakes of others, as it were - make damn well sure you are right before jumping into the fire. Failure to do so will result inevitably in a demonstration of your limited intellect to all and sundry, as is the case here.
I can only note in closing that it is a pity that you lack even the self-belief to attach a name to your comments - the anonymous grammar Nazi is perhaps held lower in the collective self-esteem than are the goatse and BSD trolls.
Yours faithfully
iqu
Where are my mod points when I need them?
Besides, frankly, I just happen to be a *NIX fanboy (although as I get older, I am becoming more tolerant of both Windoze and Windolts).
I have just recieved my new pc from dell, and yes, firefox is pre-installed as the default browser, and is nice and prominent as a shortcut on the desktop and right at the top of the start bar under Internet. And no, it doesnt have a special dell skin, but the home page is to Dell's EULA. IE is also still installed of course and still has its icon on the desktop which will make people that are used to clicking on the 'e' continue their bad habit (yes i am a firefox supporter).
I just hopes this gives the browsers support a boost.
Nufu Game Making Team Nufu Networks
And it appears you still have to purchase Opera to use it without adverts.
I followed your link and looked at the screenshots, and I checked that the last update for that page was today. However when I open up my version of Opera, I see no ads of any type. No banner ads, no text ads. And I certainly did not purchase or even register my copy.
Opera 8.51 build 7712
For the record, I am a Firefox user. I use Opera, Konquerer and IE to test webpages.
Microsoft's income based on IE is negligible if not negative. It costs them absolutely nothing for Dell to preinstall Firefox; the only cost is altering the Windows Update site to allow for both browsers--which they're doing anyway.
Eventually, MS might reach a deal with the Mozilla Foundation to bundle Firefox with Windows, saving them the expense of maintaining IE. Then everyone wins--the users get a better browser and a more secure OS; Microsoft's reputation improves all around; Firefox spreads further; and website designers get redesign their sites to support standards and nix ActiveX controls.
Where's the problem?
The *only* reason Firefox is more secure than IE is that it has lower market share, as a result less effort spent on compromising it. The same reason MAC has few, if any, viruses and exploits.
Someone in Blake Ross's blog said that it was the only web browser icon on the desktop. So the probability that people are actually going to use it is high.
Does anyone else find it ironic that this story appears right after "Challenges to Microsoft for 2006"?
What is so good about Firefox?
The name. Do I want a frickin Flaming Fox of Mass Destruction running on my computer, or a Fat Lady singing? You bet I am going to install an Inferno-Carrying Fox engulfing the world in a flaming blaze!
These are legitimate questions. To make a stab at answering them: Speaking for my present Mandriva 10.1, Firefox 1.5 bombed like crazy due to dependencies; Firefox 1.0.7 runs fine and it's what I'm using now with no complaints. 1.5 may need to set for awhile longer, and anyway most of the plugins/extensions/themes still go on 1.0.x anyway.
well unless their firefox is somehow better than the version i downloaded from the mozilla website i think a lot of dell users will be most upset. not only does it use 500mb of ram, it also often doesn't close down properly and unless you knew to kill the process in task manager (in which case why are you buying dell?) you wouldn't have a clue what to do
Opera went free and ad-free a couple of months back with version 8.5. There was a big whoopety-doo about it at the time. Those screenshots are out of date, as most screenshots posted on the Internet always seem to be. Not saying you should use Opera, just get your facts straight. For me it was the best browser a few years ago but now nothing can really hold a candle to Firefox plus a few essential extensions:
Adblock + Filterset.G from Pierceive.com
FlashGot
NoScript
PDF Download
Tabbrowser Extensions by Shimoda Hiroshi (not the Tabbrowser Preferences available from the "official" extensions site which is a pale imitation, you'll have to Google for it using the author's name). This by itself is the single best extension for Firefox as far as I am concerned. Long live automatic colored tab groups.
Opera is nice but there is no way it can keep up with the simple flexibility of Firefox these days.
Wow. What a clueless post! Obviously you don't know anything about browsers or security! FF doesn't support ActiveX/BHO and all that common scumware that infects millions of fully patched machines just because people use IE. That alone makes EVERY other browser (not just FF) nearly infinitely more secure than IE will ever be. Not to mention, IE itself is full of holes (HOW software is written DOES matter a great deal - not just popularity/mindshare) which often turn out to be extremely critical ones, and take ages to be patched - just peek at secunia's homepage, usually you can see some IE advisories (last I checked that was the only 2 advosories at the top of their page). And it keeps hapenning all the time (JS issues, CSS parsing issues, IFrame issues, etc). IE is by far the single most insecure piece of crap junkware I've EVER seen from ANY vendor, on ANY platform. It's about the only Microsoft app I will NOT use (and that's coming from someone ppl here would nearly call a MS-fanboy/shill). It *IS* buggy insecure featureless non-standards compliant crap, and by far the worst browser of them all out there.
FF just like other software has flaws, can be compromised and such, but it gets patched quicker (and the right way), and it doesn't usually give some web page full access to the system.
You seriously don't have a clue. -1, Troll.
I've had to deal with shit like this before. It probably has to do with the bean counters and pencil pushers. They say "we developed with arbitrary version X.XX. We will not support anything else". We run a fair amount of closed-source software on our Linux systems. It pisses me off so much because I get that answer on a weekly basis. "You can not install this update because we haven't certified our software with it". Even if it is purely security fixes. Even if the security hole is huge. Those bastards will fight you kicking and screaming.
So yes, they _should_ be shipping with 1.0.7. However, I'm willing to bet bullshit policies like the above mentioned keep them from doing so.
Here's my favorite example...
We run software that has little/no server side code of their own. Almost everything done on the server is Informix IDS 10 (Informix 95%, their software 5% of processing). The clients connect directly to the database. They won't support RHEL 4 (the most current and stable version. Has been out quite some time), however, they will support RHEL 3 w/ no patches. To throw in the mix, they _will_ support SLES 9, which release cycle wise, is very close to RHEL 4. In fact, from my experience Informix IDS 10 runs better on RHEL 4 than RHEL 3. Why won't they give us the ok? Because companies would rather there be huge security risks than take the time to setup a proper regression test process that can quickly identify possible issues. If you were cracked because of a security hole, they will make claims such as "well you should have set up your network this way blah blah blah hindsight blah blah".
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I'd still like to see Dell selling bare-metal.
Incidentally, I should recommend you consider more carefully before hitting "Submit". While the information you have provided is undoubtedly correct, coupling it with insults seriously reduces your effectiveness in disseminating that knowledge.
nice .sig - who said it?
It's all history, man. -anon
Given that Firefox has this nifty (and actually functioning) feature which can check for updates on it's own, I think people will have plenty of opportunity to upgrade gracefully.
I'd still use FF 1.0.6 (and did, until 1.0.7 came out) over IE any day of the week. In fact the only real bug I've found in 1.5 has to do with a self-signed cert on a Radware accelerator (SSL site), which I cannot explain. It happens at random times too so I can't just duplicate it either. Very odd.
IIRC, their diagnostic cd uses active x to figure out what drivers and stuff you are missing. i believe their website also does something like that. does this mean they are going to change their tools too?
The reason I don't use Opera is because I fell in love with the free FF (Phoenix 0.2, actually) back when Opera gave me a choice of looking at ads or sending in money. I'm not an OSS bigot, just practical. And in the practical world, free beats non-free. I've since tried the free Opera (as I have several times in the past) and it's OK but it's not super-great.
Remember: IE was free, too, and it was even easier to access than FF, but I tried FF, liked it more, and switched. I'll try a product and change if it's great, which IE isn't, FF is, and Opera isn't. To me, at least.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That said, my IQ measures out at 138 - not especially imposing, but certainly not an idiot. I assert that I am not knowingly lying (it is possible that I have made honest mistakes, but I have not lied).
My error? Hoping that perhaps you will work out whatever bile you must and start to think before hitting "submit".
I can't believe a comment about firefox & dell being marked as "troll" in a thread about dell & firefox. I guess somebody didn't get what they want for Christmas.
If Firefox was IE but open source, I wouldn't use it.
When Opera gave away free regcodes, I tried it for a while. Personally, I found the following:
Pros:
- Opera does have faster back-forward speed
- Built-in mouse gestures (though the ones in the FF Mouse Gestures extension are much more customizable)
Cons:
- NO EXTENSIONS! That's a HUGE thing for me, and mostly what switched me back.
- Not as customizable IMHO
Design was never an issue for me, and Firefox doesn't look like a "frankenbrowser". It looks like a nice, lightweight, functional browser. Nothing that harms the eyes.
On that note, why is it that a lot of Opera (and Apple) users, like the parent, seem to LOVE to generalize about other groups? In effect, they're inferring that users of other products are idiots who don't even deserve their time.
You'd get a lot further trying to convince us on the merits of the product rather than throwing names and generalizations around.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Firefox is more widely used, IE is forced to get better.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Albert Einstein
I didn't make the recommendation. I was hired after they were purchased (and I was hired to help with a major production environment roll-out, helping off-load some of the occasional office IT requests on the side), and my boss didn't wish to go with a free solution for antivirus. So IE stayed default, anti-spyware stuff was installed, and users received a strong request to use Firefox whenever possible with a brief explanation why. IE was removed from the toolbar/desktop/start menu.
I'm Director of IT at a good sized company and know what I'm talking about
You all usually think you do. Is that why you recommended uninstalling programs which are necessary to the proper functioning of the machine, and disabling antivirus protection? You're also rather fond of jumping to conclusions, as witnessed above when you assumed I recommended McAfee. I also liked the instant assumptions that I was incompetent. Do you treat your employees this way as well?
By the way, you might want to install the spelling extension for Firefox. You need it.
Please help metamoderate.
Why put pen to paper when you can bitch about it on slashdot?
No? Well, I think you are in error, and it might be correct to think before hitting submit.
(There. Wasn't that better than calling you the pig-fucking moron you obviously are?)
Heh. You just proved the main claim of my earlier comment in reply to him. :)
Antivirus software should not use a browser for anything. That offers an attack vector. The last thing you want is for an antivirus program running on a corrupted machine to have to work through a corrupted browser.
You make a mistake in insisting that language be logical. It isn't: usage morphs over time, and once-ungrammatical constructions become normal. Take, for example, the difference between 'I feel good' and 'I feel well.'
Would you say, "Microsoft are a company" or, "Microsoft is a company"?
I'd tend to say 'Microsoft is a company' in order to put the two sides into agreement. However, I'd also say 'Microsoft have been fined by the EU.' It's a matter of feeling and nuance, really.
Now it's your turn to point out some equally nonsensical language construct that is only used by us 'mericans.
Here's one where Americans often use a plural noun as if it were singular:
'That's a savings of $5!'
It sounds odd to my ears, but it's obviously very common in US usage.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Firefox is not just a browser, it is a symbol of rebelion against the system. We should rename it the Ché-wser and make t shirts! :-P
:)
Great moderator for you, bad moderator for me. We should rename firefox the UBER h4x0r @ d34db33f uber-1337 browser, I mean, only 1337 people are cool enough to use it.
#!/bin/bash
login root
chmod 775 universe://
The only question is whether it's worth the effort when most installers are pretty good at figuring it out for themselves now anyway.
Of course it's worth the effort, as in practice, it would force Dell to talk its suppliers into releasing either Linux drivers or enough hardware information to implement Linux drivers for peripherals that Dell rebadges and sells on its web site.
Fortunately Dell will sell most of its desktops bare (without Windows)
But why do Dell and similar mail-order PC vendors often charge more for the FreeDOS configuration than for the configuration including a Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition license?
A lot of people would click the program with "Microsoft" written on, as they are used to it and its a "familiar face".
"Face"... that gives me an idea. Why not represent the vulnerability history of each choice as a rotated :-), :-|, or :-( ?
Word is not the app you should be comparing. Try replacing an Excel user's spreadsheet program with OpenOffice.org Calc.
Does Excel come with Dell home PC software bundles? No, but Word does as part of Microsoft Works Suite. The suggestion here is to install OOo alongside Works Suite.
It just doesn't make sense to buy from Dell for something like that. It's like mail ordering for movie rentals...
I don't understand your analogy. Mail-order movie rental services such as Netflix are likely to have a better selection of less-popular "long tail" titles such as documentaries and foreign films than your local Blockbuster store has.
After using Firefox almost exclusively for over two years, I rarely have run into approxiamtely a dozen pages (out of tens of thousands) that didn't work because they were in Firefox.
But if your college or your employer or your bank (in a town where no other banks have branches) is among those dozen sites, then what?
most large firms I know, who buy from Dell, have IE only web sites and intranets.
Intranets I can see[1]. But public web sites? As more people discover Firefox, watch these large firms lose sales to competitors whose web sites do work with Firefox.
[1] In theory IE can be firewalled to visit only the intranet and Microsoft.com.
The vast majority of people won't benefit from the 64-bit wide registers in the slighest. That speeds up some things but mostly they're limited to tasks like crypto, bignum math or register intense filter algorithms [even then that's pushing it].
Audio and video production tools use "register-intense filter algorithms", especially when running effects, mixing, and lossy compression. The fact that the registers are up to 64 bits wide isn't as important as the fact that there are twice as many of them (16 on x86-64 vs. 8 on x86). If these filters can be efficiently implemented in software, then the computer vendor can add another bullet point to its sales pitch.
They don't need more than 4GB though.
Yet. How big is a DVD-9 again? How big is the DV source that was encoded to produce that DVD-9? And how big are databases? With a 64-bit memory model, you can mmap() a whole file instead of having to manually swap data in and out of core.
their diagnostic cd uses active x to figure out what drivers and stuff you are missing.
Firefox has a counterpart to ActiveX: it's called a Netscape plug-in.
Um thanks for repeating what I said...
My point was that most computer users won't benefit tremendously from the extra registers. [especially when running windows anyways].
Compare to the K7 [Barton series] the K8 makes a better 32-bit processor which is about what most seem to need anyways. So being bound to Win32 on a K8 [as painful as that seems, I don't do it myself... my X2 runs gentoo] is not a horrible thing.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Dell was in a prime position to prop up, and if I were you I would not discount the tremendous effort Carly put into burying any chanes Compaq/HP had.
If you put someone else up against Dell, you're going to have a pretty fierce enemy and I don't see anyone around strong enough to prop up against them (only speaking to the US market here).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I didn't say reporting it did not make sense. I said it is not significant. Firefox and other things do not come preinstalled on consumer desktops because Microsoft will not allow it.
It is one thing for exceptions to happen outside of the consumer desktop market or in other countries. Places that are not 100% Microsoft's home turf.
The U.K. is not microsofts home turf. The United States is. That is why firefox being preinstalled on a consumer desktop there would be significant news.
It would mean that Microsoft has lost a substantial amount of power over pc manufacturers/distributiors.
That was pretty much what my original post said, which was on topic for this thread, but some childish person modded it as "troll".
In a nutshell he did not like the thought, though it belonged in this thread.
"Bad man, go away!" was essentially the response.
I mean no offense to you, but firefox preinstalled on consumer desktops in the U.K. just does not have the significance that it would have had happening in the US.
Ah Firefox... how promising you once were.
:)
You started off well and genuinely seemed to be designed to help me control what I saw on that there intermaweb. You blocked popups and gave me control of what I viewed (courtesy of Ad Block etc.) You really did seem to want to let me "take back the web".
But now you keep insisting that "additional plugins are required to view this page". Sorry but I disagree. I don't REQUIRE any plugins. Sorry but I don't want Flash. I'm just not interested in viewing those Flash adverts. I'd rather those CPU cycles went to Seti@home instead. Hell I'd rather they went to Sony's rootkit than to some fucking retarded marketroid's idea of what a web advert whould look like.
If Firefox is helping me "take back the web" then why does it insist I REQUIRE Flash to be installed ? Sorry I just don't want it. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
So whilst Firefox is still marginally better than IE (at least there's no Craptive-X in there) it's now a complete pain in the arse to use on any mainstream sites (i.e. anything with Flashvertising due to the following sequence of events:
"Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page,
"Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page,
"Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page
Gives up in disgust and goes back to the pub
Yet it started off with so much promise... Ho hum.
P.S. And no, setting "plugin.default_plugin_disabled" to false in about:config doesn't switch this off anymore so there.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
of course it's less significant than if it happened in US consumer desktops because the market is different.
but you said it's 'not news' and that you needed waking up. don't change your position when challenged, have a bit more guts. and don't claim another meaning for your original troll just coz someone mods it like it deserved.
and another thing, Dell and Microsoft have long been international companies. they care only about units shifted and profits. they have no emotional attachment to 'home turf' whatsoever. any executive that argued they could mess around in non-US markets because it didn't really matter since it's not 'home turf' would not be working there the next day.
Uh.. They did this with Netscape for about a zillion years, so what's the big deal?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Not sinful, wicked infidels, but
[rant] i.e. pay tax dollars for health care and gay rights. Instead of bombs. D'oh. [/rant]
Nothing in life is Free....not even FreeDOS. If you look closely at the fine print next to the operating system selection, it says FreeDOS is included in the price.
x ?CS=19&kc=19&oc=DE510SAP
I'm speculating this is where the $20 comes from...
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.asp
Sure it may be nice from a programmers point of view but don't kid yourself that it's any faster.
"Nice from a programmer's point of view" means that mistakes are less likely. This won't make your software faster to run, but it will likely make your software faster to develop in a reliable manner.
If you're smart you could do a userspace cache to make the program platform agnostic
Under a 64-bit operating system, all of RAM is just a userspace cache for disk.
if you code properly
Who codes a large system properly? Human beings working on real commercial systems can only approach correct code, but if you can approach it more closely, you can give your customers better assurances.
Select "Work Offline", and even with a massive cache most webpages in your recent history come up as "This page cannot be displayed offline." Plus the stupid thing still tries to acceess remote websites when you do. It still lacks a decent download manager, everytime you upgrade it breaks the extensions, and gives saved pages stupid default names like "default.asp"
The Firefox developers are as arrogant as Microsoft ever was. On the latter point, one of them declared "Why should Firefox do anything but us the website filename?" And that was that.
Firefox showed a lot of promise, but they're grown arrogant. If Internet Explorer adds tabbed browsing in the next release, I'm switching back. I am sick of Firefox.
"If you act now, we'll send you a second Frobnicator, FREE! That's a total savings of nine million dollars!"
Fank Zappa, in one of his songs.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
The Dell "muppet" would use a process to install Linux that you may have heard about somewhere: mass production.
The muppet will be guided by an invisible hand in the form of a precise script, the muppet can be trusted because the hardware has little variability and the muppet is good at following instructions (I wonder if nowadays the process is completely automatic and the muppets only assemble the final product and the hard disk has been loaded automatically with the software).
Next time I buy a computer I will be more than willing to check for pre-installed Linux machines. I have had enough with hacking my way around Linux, it is nice, one learns alot, but there is a moment when you need something just to work once your freedom is safe (formats, possibility to change provider, etc).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.