So, I finally switched to using Firefox full time. And now, for my great Evangalizing tale...
Actually, there isn't one. It works 99% like the MIE 6.2x I'd been using, and aside from slightly different icon appearances, and a search toolbar rather than a pop up window, I wouldn't know I'd "made the switch," as they say. I changed for technical reasons; suddenly Sunday morning upon bootup my computer started popping up a WMI error box that I'd never seen before. It kept coming back too, every 20-30 seconds, and it was a new box each time; I couldn't just minimize it or drag it to a corner where I could ignore it.
Windows help was as useful as ever:
The WMI (Window Management Instrumentation) Control is a tool that lets you configure WMI settings on a remote computer or local computer. Use the WMI Control to set permissions for authorized users and groups, turn error logging on or off, back up the WMI repository, or perform other configuration tasks.
Which is great, but there's nothing about fixing it or making it stop popping up. I found some more info online, but just enough to learn that it's a feature that runs a lot of your computer's functions and that you can disable it, but that doing so will usually kill your firewall and lots of other necessary functions.
Repairing HD errors didn't help, and I couldn't run virus scan or much else since my computer was locking up each time the window popped up. I was considering reinstalling Win XP, when it stopped after the next restart, then started up again once I started surfing, and my browser kept crashing. About that time I noticed that the MIE icon was inexplicably missing from my quickstart taskbar, and taking that as a sign, I left the browser closed, saw that no pop ups appeared, and downloaded the latest Firefox, imported my bookmarks and browser settings, and fired it up.
Firefox worked just like MIE, the WMI pop up errors stopped, and the French webpage I was trying to view google translated (see news on the HGL site) didn't crash Firefox as it had MIE. And here I am, hours later and pretty happy. I've had to dig up several passwords since Firefox didn't import those, and I had to spend a while rearranging my bookmarks since they imported but were resorted alphabetically, but other than that there are no problems. Several sites even load faster, and I've been told that FF works much better with wikis, which is useful since I've been spending a lot of time on one of those lately.
So there.
Labels: firefox
