Silence is Golden

I'm an easy going type of guy... most of the time. I would rather say nothing about a program, particularly a freebee, rather than voice a negative opinion.

This comes out of a message I recently received from one of my regular readers. He was kind enough to send me some links to material about Internet Explorer 5... in the expectation I would be covering the new version. My response was along the above lines.

Discussions about Explorer versus Navigator / Communicator are the quickest way I know to draw up lines of battle... including a few skirmishes from the Opera faithful. My position statement is this. I'm currently running Navigator Stand Alone 4.08 with Pegasus Mail as my default E-mail program.

This reflects my personal preferences... maybe being left handed is relevant... maybe not. It also takes account of "no thank you, I don't want my browser integrated with my operating system." To me, that's a marketing matter, not a technical issue.

What had me shaking my head over IE 5 was numerous reports of installation problems but most particularly the full install runs to thirty mgs! It's at this point the Opera fraternity becomes most vocal because Netscape is almost as bad - sizewise.

Being old-fashioned takes over here. I'm of the computer generation that created the Y2K problem and a large part of this was due to all computer components being very expensive. "Space" was at a premium and small efficient programs the name of the game. I still vividly remember being very proud of my first programming effort, to convert Pounds, Shillings and Pence to decimal. A professional programmer immediately reduced it in size by 90%.

I would have received a kindly pat on the head but for the fact I was his boss - but I did catch the look in his eye!

What I do remain proud of is only having a 1.2 gig hard drive and usually keeping a third of it empty. This is despite my using a lot of software. Lean and mean is the way for me, no matter how much cheaper hardware is nowadays. Bloatware is the favourite word of many programmers. Again, it's a matter of pride.

Just to round out this browser update I'll mention that Communicator has now crept up to 4.51... no doubt their 5 is not far off.

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To return to my favourite topic, small and beautiful, and even better another useful little utility.

Add/Remove Pro: Super Win Software

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