At-home career professionals spend much of their time on the Internet. Whether for logging into secure systems, checking email or performing research, we have to be able to rely on our Internet browsers.
Right now, I am becoming disenchanted with Internet Explorer (IE). Until last week, I used IE7 for several years. Then suddenly it just kept shutting down on me—or rather, getting stuck in the land of “not responding.” I’m pretty sure it had something to do with Microsoft updates to my system. Well, I finally gave in and upgraded to IE8…and I’m not seeing any improvements, or any distinctions in the two versions for that matter. For me, IE8 has too many lags and delays, the primary delay occurring when I upload documents from my computer.
Whether I am attaching a file to email or uploading to my website, the execution time can be counted in minutes and not seconds! I’m not a computer expert by any means so I’m not sure what could be causing it. And, though I am a diehard Microsoft fan, I am close to giving up completely on IE. In fact, for the past few days, I have opted to keep IE closed and use Mozilla Firefox.
With all that stated, I realize that I still have to use IE to access a few client proprietary web-based programs. It hasn’t been that long ago that I could only open webmail from my previous university in IE. So, though I like Firefox, it’s not an all-purpose solution.
On that note, I am happy to report that I have not had any problems with consistent lags or delays with Firefox on my PC. By the way, I just upgraded to the latest versions of Firefox on both my PC and Mac. When I started using the Mac version, the only slightly annoying aspect was that I had to select an application a dialog box when I opened a pdf document in the browser. After doing that twice, I opened the application preferences and set the default applications I wanted to use. No more annoyance! There are often delays with Firefox on the Mac, but no more than with the other browsers.
There are other options besides IE and Firefox. My husband (who gave up on IE in 2008) likes the Opera browser on his PC. He says that the pages load faster and videos play “like cable tv.” Before trying Opera, he had used Safari and liked that pretty well… until he learned about Opera.
My opinion of Safari is limited to my use of the browser on my Mac. Delays occur pretty often and that “rainbow pie of doom” appears on the screen. However, the program usually starts working within a minute. I use the Opera browser on my phone and it definitely works better than the mobile version of IE. I have downloaded Opera to my PC. I am not using it because for now, Firefox is working quite well.
Finally, I realize that Google Chrome has been out there but since I haven’t tried it, I cannot offer an opinion.
Which browser do you prefer to use on your Mac or PC? Why? Let’s share ideas!
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I don’t agree with what you said about explorer. I haven’t had many problems with it at all. Try checking your security and firewall settings. Maybe your software is slowing you down, which may prove to be good thing in the long run.
Good suggestion. I had done that in the past…with every update, something new happens. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for an update that corrects the problems!