Sheeesh! I thought computers were meant to make life easier.
Just got a new PC for my other half with more RAM (1024 MB) and disk space (160 gigs) than we'll ever know what to do with, but most of it was a free upgrade so it was a pretty good deal. Plus a great opportunity to drag her away from IE, I thought. Everything nice and new and different. I'll just 'add' a couple of extra bits in while I set it up and she'll never notice. :rolleyes:
Installed F-Secure. Always my first step. I've used F-Secure for the past three years and it rocks. Multiple and automatic updates all day every day. Plus I get it for free under a work licence, so no contest there.
Then get the firewall up. My, how things have changed down Zone Alarm street. Tried to load the latest version and ZA spat me out and said it wouldn't work with F-Secure anti-virus software. Gaargh! I thought they'd fixed the problems they were having, but it seems the fix just blocks out things they haven't fixed (if you see what I mean). Reverted back to a previous version of Zone Alarm that I'd prepared earlier and which works fine with XP, F-Secure on my machine. It locked up her system completely. So within 10 minutes I was going down the Safe Mode (F8) boot routine, swearing blind I hadn't broken anything and that I knew what I was doing. Uninstalled. Reinstalled. F8'd about a dozen times and gave up. 😥
Finally submitted to the inevitable and activated the XP in-built in-bound-only firewall and we were off. Quick check on Steve Gibson's site declared the machine safe, so for the moment that's what I'm using. Plan to try out Kerio on my other machine when I get a chance. But I'm finished with Zone Alarm for good.
I loaded Opera (of course); but Opera has one big problem: it won't work on her favourite message board. (Well it does, but the site has some dodgy scripting for uploading files and such like and these bits won't work however much I try and force 'em to). So as a second string I added Firefox 0.92 (plus a couple of extensions to make it behave like a tabbed browser should…). I really don't get the basic Firefox set-up at all. Create a tabbed browser, let it load every external link in a new window, and then make you get an extension to stop what is patently daft behaviour. Surprise, surprise 'Single Window' is just about their number 1 download. One thing that FF does have going for it though is a bookmark menu you can edit on the fly (I know you can do this in the Panel on Opera, but that ain't the point). Oh, I also killed one of the toolbars to give more space, and shunted a couple of extra buttons onto the main bar to make it look a bit more like IE. Will add mouse gestures as well. Nice compromise between a familiar look and decent functionality. Still not a patch on Opera to my way of thinking, but then I'm navigating entirely by mouse, have the menu bar hidden away and the merest smattering of useful buttons. My set-up, for those who are interested.
Anyway, the other half is delighted with FF (wants it set as the default browser), and I've grabbed the new 17" flat screen and sub-woofer sound system that came with the new PC so I guess it's an honourable draw for the moment. Both happy, and neither of us using Internet Exploder (those recent US CERT reports certainly did the trick in this neck of the woods).