Gonna stay with IE, here's why

The past two days I've finally gotten around to experimenting with alternative browsers, I've been playing with Mozilla and Firefox. I test my surfing speed at numion.com. Both of these browsers are MUCH slower at downloading than IE and I have run these tests many times, switching back and forth between them and IE. I have used the custom installs and done nothing fancy, none of the plug-ins, etc. I would still like to entertain the idea of using one of these alternatives for the obvious security reasons, but only if they will surf for me as fast as IE. I am open to any suggestions to speed these two up because right now, they are getting killed by IE!

Thank you,
Acadia

P.S. Oh yeah, I am on Comcast cable.

 

Acadia - I also tried the alternatives and stayed with an IE Shell (NetCaptor). I've read all the threads about IE being less secure, but I think as long as you practice safe surfing, tweak the settings appropriately, and install patches as they are distributed, you'll be OK.

 

Opera 7.54 is absolutley faster than IE and it is much faster and stable than firefox or mozilla. I have tried them all and will stay with opera. And it is more secure than firefox seeing as how opera is not a beta like firefox.

 

Aren't some of the speed tests using ActiveX controls (PCPitstop)?
FF uses extensions (plugins) so maybe that could affect the tests?

 

Okay. Thanks.

 

Haven't found anything faster than the Opera 7.54 and Proxomitron combination.

Nick

 

I wont be going with anything but IE. It gets the job done. No point in having to browsers.

I love the pop up blocker btw.

Now they just need to add tab browsing and a download manager and it will be sweet

 

Everyone, thanks for all of the replies. I keep ActiveX killed on IE. Opera, huh, sounds interesting. I just might have to give the free version a try. Haven't installed SP2 yet but even then I will probably use the popup stopper that I currently have, I LOVE that thing (I hope I can disable the IE stopper). I'm just puzzled because some folks were bragging that Mozilla and Firefox were "faster", maybe at other things but not on downloading, at least not on my system, at least not in their current versions. Agree about the tabs, IE, where are they? Opera, here I come ... (Thanks again everyone).

Acadia

 

have you tried about:config tweaks with ff? the tweaks are supposed to speed things up

 

iceni60,

Which tweaks are good for speed/safety?
Where can I learn about them?

Thanks

 

There's an excellent but very loooong thread at MozillaZine that will tell you all about tweaking Firefox for speed:
Firefox Tuning, http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=53650

A much easier to use summary of the thread (which is just on interpretation of the various recommendations) can be found here:
http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks/firefoxtweak/4.html

If you've never changed setting with about:config or a user.js file (the latter is easier because you can more easily keep track of settings you change and also keep the same settings when upgrading Firefox), you can find out what this involves by paging back a page at the tweakfactor site (the second link).

It's worth the little time it takes to learn about this kind of configuration for Firefox because once you learn it there are all sorts of neat things you can do. Check out this site for more ideas (not just speed tweaks):
http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html

pollux

 

Thanks pollux!

 

Just to be fair give opera at least a week for you to set all of your preferences and get to know the browser.

 

Many people were pleasantly amazed at how good SP 2's popup blocker is. It's much better than most third party popup blockers.

 

Yes it is I love it.

IE is hopefully headed for a better future.

Come on Microsoft!

 

IE sucks, just try avant browser:www.avantbrowser.com
or green browser:greenbrowser.com
You'll see the differences.

 

Avant and greenbrowser are just IE in disguise, subject to the same exploits as IE. Heck many people even find that IE's XP SP2's popup blocker is superior to the one in Maxthlon

 

The thing I like the most about Firefox is the customisation. You can adjust virtually everything. Opera is definitely more polished and as fast if not faster than Firefox but you can't even merge the address bar with other toolbars, let alone install an adblocking extension.

IE is horribly clunky and out of date, browsing without tabs, or quick searches is just too painful.