Interesting the amount of dislike for FF on this thread. I've been using FF for years now and while it does have it's downs from time to time I enjoy all the addons that make surfing the internet a lot better for me. IE, not only did it not give any kind of addons or interesting features but there were times it would not even close after hitting the X. I honestly have not tried other browsers besides FF but I am very happy with it and to believe that FF is perfect or something like that is to be naive. It's obvious FF will have bugs from time to time, but that's no reason to put it down like it's a copy of IE. As far as I'm concerned I'm glad Microsoft is considering allowing IE to be eliminated from Windows 7.

Did this little problem truly make everyones life that much harder? It was only a minor annoyance.

While OT, this is slightly incorrect. ie8 will still be there, just not active, and you'll really have to drill down to 'deactivate' it.

If, that is, you believe it's really deactivated.

Is that FF's memory...or your OWN that's shot?...;)

It may be usefull from time to time to erase all temporary files and a browser cache. Especially if one has problems with the browse. 3rd party tools may do this too. Be aware however of the anonymizers! They are a usefull tool somewhere, however not if you want to save your login information.

Quite the reverse. It's actually forcing me to remember my login details!

True, still, that's better than nothing.

Google Chrome

Not so much dislike of FF as dislike of their rabid fans and excuse makers. FF is far from perfect. I use it, and IE7, and chrome... for different things. But I recognize that FF is very buggy...

There has been tons of memory leaks in FF2 that were always quashed by rabid fans saying things like "there is a cahcing feature and you just don't understand what a mem leak is"... then FF3 comes about and one of its features is "over 300 memory leaks fixed"... FF still leaks memory out the wazoo btw.

Amen.

FF using a gig and a half of RAM when it only had 3 tabs open was...not my idea of a good time.

True, but it's a lot better now than it was in 2 or 1.

I upgraded from 4 to 8GB of ram... its so cheap right now and I don't wanna bother with it.

FF3 does not leak much. However it does not end sessions of the closed tabs. It has the advantage they could be easily revived, if one accidentaly closes them. However it consumes memory. I prefer it this way - a lot of memory is no problem nowadays. What I dislike on FF3 is Stardock forums do not work properly with this browser.

This is now fixed. I restored Windows from back-up to a version before Tuesday's update. All is well again.

Typical how Windows Update solves one problem but creates others.

I don't have any forum problems with FF3, and with four tabs open it's stable at around 92Mb memory...

And that's why I have Windows Updates disabled

Glad you fixed it, man.

Could this be a conspiracy  by Microsoft to get users to abandon XP by breaking it with funky updates?

Nah, that can't be it.

Yup, that's it orright... and an attempt to get users to abandon FF for IE, they just didn't count on it breaking IE as well.

Everything breaks IE. 

yeah.....and it's really annoying....

Microsoft... the bastards

Yeah, I've heard logging onto the Playboy site consistently breaks it.... wonder if that's payback cos non of the MS bigwigs ever get invited to Hef's parties at the Playboy mansion.

[sarcasm]don't be rediculous... its only CHILDREN (specifically, other's) that can't watch smut... Smut must be decried as the evil that it is... while discreetly enjoyed[/sarcasm]

I personally (and every other PC in my home) have never had one single issue with any of the IE versions ever.

Guess it's what people do with their browsers that might cause them to break.....

As far as windows updates go....

Every PC in my home gets all windows updates forced down it's throat!  Not that that's a bad thing though........aside from having to replace/upgrade hardware now and then none of the PC's in our home have had any software issues whatsoever. 

Sometimes my kids (teens) would like to run third-party browsers etc. and aren't too happy when I don't OK them........the kids are sure grateful however for having PC's that always work!   

It's never my kids who are holding up "gaming nights" among their friends.  Their friends are always having one issue or another preventing them from playing games.  My kids might hate having all the windows updates and using IE but they love never having problems more than not having FF......so my "draconian methods" are appreciated!  hehe 

The content of my browsing in IE was never any different than my browsing in FF, although it was extreme multitasking.  Around 600 windows, IE would crash, and take Explorer with it.  Not having a restore function hurt, too.  This was IE6, if memory serves.

If FF holds up a gaming night, you're doing something wrong.

IE is also still so <censored> slow (IME) in comparison to...even an IE-based third-party browser.  And it doesn't help that it calls and loads a function from a DLL when you hit the stop button...it should do what it says it does and stop.

sometimes windows update breaks something, but overall its a good thing, I enable it on any computer I manage, its easier to fix then handle all the viruses it accrues from KNOWN security holes.