It's time to make the switch

I remember the day clearly in Encino, Calif. in late 1996. I asked a co-worker "What if I tried Internet Explorer and liked it better? That would be scary."

I'm not sure when I did finally make the move, but I eventually did try it, did like it much better than Netscape. I struggled through version 3 and its integration into Windows 98 and Active Desktop. It crashed regularly, but it was so cool, that I suffered for the geek cool.

IE4 came along and later IE5. Things were good for awhile.

But then, IE6. If I had stayed with IE5, I might still be using IE5. But installing IE6 just made things so bad that my wife demanded I fix the computer.

So I installed Firefox. Oh, sure, I've used IE from time-to-time, but it's just not the same anymore. Firefox is so much faster, so much sleeker, so much more useful.

Sure, it will still automatically load our corporate intranet each day, but I'll be clicking that close button right away. Sure, I'll still have to use it for poorly written software for work that only works in IE (yeah, I'm talking about you, Ceridian, Silk Road, Quantivate and USAA.com*), but if I don't have to, I'm never touching Internet Explorer again. (*Only the Deposit@Home feature... though I suspect it may be a Java problem.)

If it hasn't been declared before, Firefox is no longer for the "geek cool," the poweruser and the nerd. If you use the computer to surf the web, it's time to ditch Internet Explorer. The latest version of Firefox comes out next week and I'll be back to walk you through it.

Trust me, you'll thank me.

(If you're already using Opera or Safari, you can disregard. You're probably not suffering enough to need to make the leap.)