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Battle of the Browsers, Chapter...I've lost count

I'll be honest. I lept on Firefox the moment it was born, using decimal releases (when it was called Firebird) that led to v1.0. I was never a fan of Netscape, but didn't mind jumping to Mozilla. When they stripped out the browser, though, and gave birth to Firefox, I never looked back.

Until now. The son unit swears that Internet Explorer v7 is marvelous. He swears, I tell you. So I'm giving it a whirl. My desktop is turning into Microsoft city anyway, what with Office 2003, Office 2007 (Beta 2TR), OneNote, and now the beta 2 of OneCare. (Hell, I'm writing this post using Live Writer 1.0 Beta.) The vast Seattle corporate diety owns me more and more, so why not the browser, too?

Well, because it crashes more often than the mind can comfortably comprehend. "Unstable" is praising with faint damnation. About the only time it is usable is when running Microsoft Update. It does that all right, but I can't even log onto (Microsoft) Hotmail and check my email without a lock-up, and "this program ain't responding, shall I kill it?" (Which, BTW, XP does with frightening efficiency, sort of like killing a portion of itself with glee and joy.)

And don't tell me it's because it's just a "release candidate", because just to even the playing field I'm running Firefox 2.0 RC2. It runs perfect, not even a minor hiccup. Meanwhile, I can't finish a single browsing session with IE v7 RC2. Looks pretty good, dies pretty fast.

And so, Little 'Fox, you shall remain my bastion against the evil infiltration of Seattle. Lead me, on to OOo!

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