Have you tried Firefox? - Montana Owners Club

jrgwdenner · 12-10-2005, 02:35 AM

Firefox is a fairly new browser that is getting great reviews. It's a free download and we just added it yesterday but it has speeded up our browsing tremendously. IE was always getting stuck which is so frustrating. Sure hope things continue to work so well. If you're interested in speeding things up, try Firefox. (We're on dialup so we need all the help we can get.

Lstierw · 12-10-2005, 02:52 AM

Thanks Judy for the info. on Firefox. We will give it a try. We are presently using T-Mobile (GPRS system) and it is supposed it be 2 or 3 times faster than dial-up but it also seems slow at times. thanks again.........Les

OntMont · 12-10-2005, 04:31 AM

I have been using FF for some time. I have both IE and FF available on my computer, and I find FF does seem to work faster. Certainly worth the price of a free download, (but then, if you are on a cell phone, maybe not). Perhaps wait until you can get a better connection to the internet before making the download. I'm sure that if you visit their website, it will give you lots of information about it, and probably some idea of the download file size.

richfaa · 12-10-2005, 05:11 AM

We did try firefox and it worked well..My primary browser has always been IE simply because IE is a microsoft product as is most everything out there and it is "microsoft friendly" You need to keep firefox up as your primary browser for a long period of time for Evaluation and see what, if any, programs fail to work correctly. After @ 3 months we went back to IE because some of my softeware would not operate properly with firefox..that may NOT apply to you.Wife was using Netscape and had software issues//went to IE and all is normal..Billy Gates did not become very rich by being stupid.

jrgwdenner · 12-10-2005, 05:39 AM

I actually downloaded Firefox on our dialup at home (from their website which is Modzilla, if I recall correctly). We live out in the country a bit and haven't invested in a cable connection because we hope to be on the road a lot and will probably get Direcway in the future for the RV and at home. I kept both browsers on our home PC so we can use both interchangeably. With this little time of experiementation, I've been surprised at the increase speed. After having wireless on our trip, it was a real culture shock to come back to dialup. This speed increase is appreciated.

Glenn and Lorraine · 12-10-2005, 06:16 AM

I started with IE back in 96 when we first got "online". Over the years I have tried Netscape, Firefox, Opera and a half dozen others that no longer exist. I always came back to IE. As Rich pointed out. most everything on the Internet is designed to operate with Microsoft including Microsoft Internet Explorer.

BillyRay · 12-10-2005, 06:25 AM

all this computer stuff makes my head spin

palebluedot · 12-10-2005, 07:45 AM

I've got both on this computer and always log on to MOC with Firefox. It seems to work so much better on this site. Have IE only to long onto sites not compatible with Firefox.

jrgwdenner · 12-10-2005, 08:07 AM

I think your setup is the one that will work for us, palebluedot. It sure does make things work faster on this forum. That's a good thing.

richfaa · 12-10-2005, 08:21 AM

I've got DSL T-1 service and this forum and everything else is blinding fast.. if the forum is coming up slow and other things also come up slow you may need more RAM/ have a older slow PC or try defragmenting your hard drive.

jrgwdenner · 12-10-2005, 10:49 AM

I think we were having trouble with IE. Probably need to do a check there. Now that I'm using Foxfire everything is much faster. I'm jealous of your "blinding fast" connection but this change has really helped. Our PC is fairly new with lots of memory so I don't think the problem is there. When we use IE, we couldn't even get our Earthlink connection to turn off and other things wouldn't respond. So far, it's much better with Firefox.

dsprik · 12-10-2005, 11:15 AM

Judy, do you any anti-spyware programs that you can check your computer with? They will slow your computer down to a crawl. I have used Apple for years and since switching to an HP laptop a few weeks ago, I have had to develop a whole new mindset about spy-ware, ad-ware, and viruses. Didn't use to even have to think about them. Now I watch constantly for any headers, banners, etc being loaded by my browser of email program.

BTW, does anyone have a suggestion for email besides Outlook Express? Problem with switching from this is that most "transfer" devices - cell phones and other devices - require Outlook Express for their info transfer capability to function.

Glenn and Lorraine · 12-10-2005, 11:36 AM

Try deleting your TIF (Temporary Internet Files) as these can really bog things down and they really serve no purpose.

Go to "Tools"
"Internet Options"
Next window...
You will see a box marked Temporary Internet files
Click on "Delete Files"
Next window...
Check "Delete all offline content"
Click "OK"

These TIF files can contain a significant amount of Web page content so if you haven't deleted these files previously this process may take several minutes to complete.

I have my computer set to delete all TIFs automatically whenever I close the browser.

jrgwdenner · 12-10-2005, 01:55 PM

Thanks for all the hints, guys. I delete cookies, delete internet files, defragment files, use lots of spyware protection, McAfee, Registry Mechanic. It still works faster with Foxfire. Is there any way to improve the efficiency of IE? Updates, etc?

richfaa · 12-10-2005, 03:25 PM

Go to microsoft.com and look for IE updates.I use Mc Afee security center, spybot also I like nortons cleansweep. I do regular windows updates..XP Home..also check your startup file you may have a whole bunch of things running in the backround.Can'y tell you hoe to get there because it is different depending on the windows version you are using..If XP go to start...run..type in msconfig then click on startup

richfaa · 12-10-2005, 03:33 PM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by richfaa

Go to microsoft.com and look for IE updates.I use Mc Afee security center, spybot also I like nortons cleansweep. I do regular windows updates..XP Home..also check your startup file you may have a whole bunch of things running in the backround.Can't tell you how to get there because it is different depending on the windows version you are using..If XP go to start...run..type in msconfig then click on startup..see what is runnng You may have a bunch of unnecessray junk running in the backround that will slow you down. this is a Dell 3.2 Ghz 1Gig of RAM Running XP home, IE and outlook express..I have altell DSL T-1 service. and it is a fireball.

dsprik · 12-10-2005, 04:00 PM

IE 7 release is coming but I don't know when...

sreigle · 12-12-2005, 12:54 PM

Judy, are you using the brand new version 1.5 of Firefox? I'm using FF and like it a lot but haven't downloaded the newest version yet. I like to give it a little time to shake out any bugs.

I also run Trend-Micro's antispyware but it doesn't slow my system perceptibly. Maybe a little when doing a full system scan. Same as Norton Anti-Virus.

I use IE only for those few pages with code that's not industry-standard but does meet Microsoft standards and thus don't look quite right in FF. One thing I find is anytime I run IE my antispyware always nearly immediately finds new "bad" cookies and deletes them. When I run FF it never finds bad cookies. And since switching to FF I've not had a single instance of adware/spyware, a battle I fought fairly frequently when using IE. I've for many years been an IE proponent but FF changed my mind. Besides, I really like the tabbed browsing of FF, especially for things like this forum where I want to open multiple pages at one time, then go look at them. Much easier with tabbed browsing rather than a bunch of open windows.

jrgwdenner · 12-12-2005, 01:40 PM

Steve, I recalling talking with you about using the tab browsing in the past and didn't understand it much until I tried Foxfire. Now I see what you're referring to. I continue to be very pleased with the change to FF. Our computer isn't freezing up at all. Don't know which version we have, whatever was available just 3 or 4 days ago, I guess. Guess I should know where to look but don't.

FireTruckerWife · 12-12-2005, 02:36 PM

Steve and Judy: I ugraded to FF 1.5 and have had no problems on either computer. I love it, just can't convince FireTrucker to try it.

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