The Way of the Johnny

I downloaded the new Internet Explorer 8 last 2 weeks ago when it first came out so I could see what all the fuss was about. I had heard mixed review about IE8 and wanted to see for myself how it ran on my work desktop (3.2GHz P4 with 3 GB of RAM, Windows XP SP 3). Basically, here was my experience with IE8: it was slow and kept crashing. Truth be told, IE7 crashed on a daily basis for me and I was hoping IE8 would resolve this, but it didn't. IE8 was not only slower, but it slowed down my computer in general and crashed more often than IE7. I don't know what it does to the underpinning of Windows, but I noticed the graphical speed of Windows slowed down noticeably after installing IE8. What I mean by graphical speed is the minimizing, maximizing, and switching of windows, refreshing of the desktop, and other graphical animations of Windows. Did I mention IE8 crashes more often then IE7? This is not necessarily an IE8 problem, but more of a compatibility problem. The com...

I love Firefox and I had started using Firefox 2 last year after reading how good it was in a computer magazine. I switched over from Safari on my Mac and love the customization options of Firefox. My favorite add-on is the Foxmarks bookmark syncronizer, which lets me have the same bookmarks on all the computers I use at home and at work. But, I had the same complaints as others: Firefox 2 was a slow program and a RAM hog. So when Apple released Safari 2, I tried it out and was happy with how fast it was. Safari has RAM hogging issues too, but the speed was worth it. However, Safari also has this annoying habit of freezing my computers for several seconds for no good reason. And of course, Safari is not customizable as much as Firefox is. Now I'm back to using Firefox, specifically version 3. I went ahead and downloaded it on "download day" (after many, many tries) and installed it on both my work computer and Macbook Pro at home. I'm happy to say that it is j...