>>Hi guys
>>
>>Thought I'd kill 2 birds with 1 stone here:
>>
>>1) There's a lot of talk about Firefox cf. IE. What is the general consensus: is it better than IE? Does it have a good Favourites (bookmarks) and History facility, for instance? Where does it fall down in comparison?
>>
>>2) Firewalls. Since getting rid of Norton, and installing AVG, I'm geting a much smoother ride on my home 'puter. Similarly I took, some time ago, advantage of collecting a few free firewalls together. I understand that it's not a good idea to have more than one f/w going at any one time - I might get an even smoother ride with just on - so, out of the following, a) is it better to choose one over the other or have tow on? b) which is more recommended?
>>
>>ZoneAlarm
>>SpyBot
>>
>>Thanks for listening.
>>
>>Terry
>>
>>PS I've also got BitDefender and Registry Mechanic but these serve slightly different purposes, and, I don't think, are both "stay resident".
>
>I've been using FF for some time as my primary browser and I like it much better than IE6 (I haven't tried IE7 yet). Tabs are IMO the best feature IE6 doesn't have. But there are lots of little ways it's improved - for example, Ctrl-F Search on a page is incremental in FF, and not in IE6. FF has lots of these little improvements everywhere - you ask yourself, why didn't MS do IE6 this way in the first place? If nothing else, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Mozilla for forcing MS to improve IE.
>
>I don't use any extensions whatsoever - just some media player plugins.
>
>Problems I've encountered with FF:
>
>- does not support ActiveX controls natively. These days this is probably a *good* thing (for security reasons), but there is still a (dwindling) number of sites that require them
>
>- I've encountered some government of Canada/government of BC sites where I have to submit corporate filings on-line, and they explicitly state they only support IE and explicitly do not support Netscape/Mozilla. Since these filings are important I fire up IE for them.
>
>- a while back I couldn't log in successfully to Ingram Micro's e-commerce site with FF, but could with IE6. I looked into it at the time and it seemed like the site makes (made?) extensive use of very tricky JavaScript which may not have been fully supported by FF.
>
>- streaming media on some sites doesn't work well with vanilla FF. For example, trying to view hockey highlights on Yahoo Sports rarely works. CNN is fine, however.
>
>Certainly, I use FF for more than 99% of my browsing. The number of times I start IE in a month (other than for Windows/Microsoft Update, which requires IE) I can count on the fingers of one hand. I highly recommend FF.
>
>As for firewalls:
>
>- ZoneAlarm is a firewall, Spybot is not (it's antispyware, although it has an installable component that can help prevent installation of spyware loaded through IE [but not FF AFAIK]).
>
>- Don't even try running more than 1 firewall simultaneously
>
>- Unless you specifically want control/monitoring of outgoing traffic (rather than just blocking/monitoring incoming connection attempts) the firewall built in to XP SP2, Server 2003 and above works fine
>
>- If you have a broadband Internet connection, DON'T rely just on a software firewall. Be sure to get a low-cost hardware broadband router as your primary line of defence. Even if you don't have/want wireless connectivity, I'd recommend a router such as the Linksys WRT54GL ("GL" for Linux), which lets you load advanced open-source firmware such as dd-WRT to turn the device into a very capable router. You can disable the wireless if you don't want or need it.
>
>- Keep kids or irresponsible users away from important computers. Most problems these days are caused by them downloading and installing peer-to-peer networking software like LimeWire, frequenting sites to get "free" music/movies etc. that just require installation of a "helpful toolbar" and the like. If you stay away from dodgy sites and don't let them install anything, that's 90+% of the battle won right there.
>
>- Remember that backups are more important than firewalls.

Hey Al

Thanks very much for your informative reply. Next time I'm filing to the canadian govt. I'll remember not to use FF :-)

My BT broadband package came with a router, as most/all of them do. Is this different from the type that you describe?

Terry