Dumping IE for Firefox: A bit of caution?

I’ve seen various mentions of “hiding” Internet Explorer–or, in one magazine’s case, suggesting uninstalling it as a holiday gift for parents or other seniors.

I have no particular love for IE; at the moment, I use Firefox 2.0 for essentially all of my browsing at work, and about 99% at home. (Two sites still won’t work with Firefox.) I switched to Firefox as my dominant browser quite a while ago. I don’t find anything in IE7 (at home) that makes me want to switch back.

But…quite apart from the questionable aspects of trying to uninstall IE on a Windows system…I do have to say this:

Firefox 2.0 isn’t quite as stable as one might like, or as Firefox 1.5 was.

I’m finding that, at least once a day, it just hangs–or doesn’t finish starting up. (Actually, make that twice a day: Once at work, once at home.) Mostly it’s on startup. Sometimes it’s apparently random. Usually, a forced shutdown and restart will cure it.

I have no idea why. I do know that it’s been true ever since the 2.0 upgrade. I know Firefox seems to use humongous amounts of memory (right now, it’s at 88MB, but I’ve seen it much higher-

Now that’s interesting: Just for fun, I opened two new tabs, checked appmgr, and Firefox was down to 78MB)…

I still prefer Firefox. I’m still using it as my primary browser. But I sure like having IE as a backup…

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This work by Walt Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Stuff, Technology and software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Dumping IE for Firefox: A bit of caution?”

  1. Steven says:
    November 28, 2006 at 1:12 pm

    As for the hanging/crashing,. you might want to try starting with a fresh profile. You can Google how to find your profile directory, then backup your bookmarks and delete the folder. You will have to install all your plugins again, but it might make things run smoother.

  2. Amanda Robertson says:
    November 28, 2006 at 1:44 pm

    I have a Mac, so obviously I don’t have IE; it’s no longer supported on my platform, and frankly IE for Mac was so riddled with problems that I developed an intense dislike for the program that went far beyond any Machead prejudices. Like you, Firefox is my primary browser.

    Having said that, I also have Opera, Safari, and Shiira installed, and I’ve been known to use them – especially Opera – when Firefox has been acting up. I think it’s important to have a backup browser. Nothing performs perfectly all the time.

  3. Christina Pikas says:
    December 1, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    It’s just craziness to remove someone’s IE. There are so many things that still only work well with IE. I use Firefox 90% of the time, but there are just some things that you have to open up IE for — especially at work. Yes, I know that it’s wrong to not write your webpages to be compliant — but I can’t change the world today.

    Also, that’s like going into someone’s tool box and throwing away their favorite screwdriver. Just not a good idea.