Replacement for Internet Explorer? (vanity)

April 2, 2015 | me

[Leaning Right]

I have an older relative who is running Internet Explorer 8 on a Windows XP machine. She is finding that she can no longer load many of her favorite sites (no surprise there). So it's time for a new browser.

However, it took her quite a while to learn IE: how to add to Favorites, adjust the text size, etc. So I'm hoping there is a replacement browser out there that closely resembles her comfortable old IE 8. Any ideas would be very much appreciated!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Imagine you’re shopping for a car.
After you plunk down your cash for the car, you have to buy the doors and windows from someone else...

[chopperman]

PaleMoon and Windows7. No troubles.

[jdsteel]

My 80+ year old father in law had an old PC running XP with similar problems. I upgraded to Win 8 and...voila, no more problems. It took him a little while to get used to it, but I set it up to make the sites he goes to frequently easy to get to. IMHO that is the way to go. The PC has new life & speed, too.

[HotHunt]

Excuse me but there's nothing "knee-jerk" about it. I had a PC running Windows years ago and never had so many problems with my computer, ever. Been buying and running Macs since then and have had no problems whatsoever. And will never look back or have second thoughts. Macs are just a better product, including their operating systems.

I have friends from high school that I email regularly, and three of them have PC's. Their computers are always locking up, getting viruses, hacked, etc. I keep telling them to get a Mac. But they sound just like you and accuse me of being biased against Microsoft.

To each his own. I can't fix ignorant, blind or stupid.

[traderrob6]

Refuse to buy ANY Apple product period.

[agincourt1415]

Or go to the nearest Flea Market or Computer repair shop and buy a PC or Laptop refurbished for $100 with Windows 7. An XP PC is a BOAT ANCHOR, boot it to the curb.

[max americana]

I use Opera too. Discovered that it has a built in proxy server which changes the IP. It’s also used by my friend when ATT throttled the web connection because he wasn’t paying supposedly when Chrome and FF failed to connect with a Uverse warning.

[The Duke]

If one were to consider taking the oportunity to switch to Linux then the district I would recommend is Netrunner. It’s not as well known, but is quite nice and installs with a great set of apps. I was amazed how it breathed new life into an old Gateway laptop I had laying around (which is now my “go to” computer).

[qam1]

Avoid Opera.

I installed it for an older relative and myself awhile ago but removed it

For some reason a few versions back they took away the drop down menu bar, which means every time you want to go to a commonly / recently visited website you have to type in it

For instance if you visit FreeRepublic several times a day, there is no history and every single time you have to type in “www.freerepublic.com” which gets annoying real fast

There was supposedly a way to put it back, but it involved a complicated 10 steps of instructions involving the configuration file and even then it didn’t come back to me

Why Opera stupidly removed this common browser feature is beyond me

[RayChuang88]

You have to find out what is the latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox you can use. I believe XP can run Chrome 41.0.2272.118, the latest stable release; it may be able to run Firefox 37.0, too.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Slimbrowser functions like IE and works perfectly fine on XP.

Slim Browser IS IE. It is a front end tabbed overlay to an IE backend. Same as Greenbrowser and Maxthon.

[HotHunt]

Well, that big leftie Bill Gates has a lot going for his products too.

[OldCorps]

XP user bump

[smoky415]

Possibly some useful info here.........altho I have no personal opinion.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/browser-secure-old-windows-xp-system/

[Leaning Right]

buy a PC or Laptop refurbished for $100 with Windows 7

Is there a way to transfer over all of your Favorites (the list) from one machine to another, or do you have to build them up from scratch again?

[Leaning Right]

Nice link there (post #34). Thanks.

[camle]

i use avant and i kinda like it’s download feature, but it does tend to hang a lot...it also does not allow a bunch of them nasty pop
ups and slide-ins that chrome/ie/firefox allowed in.

if i could find a free browser that did the easy downloads, and blocked the nasties like avant,but wouldn’t crash so often, i’d certainly give it a try.

[The Great RJ]

I agree with the comments about the hardware needing an upgrade. I would first try a good clean out removing unwanted programs, running malware bytes and a thorough virus scan followed by Ccleaner to clean the registry and remove junk files. Then I would defrag the hard drive.

I have been a fan of Firefox, but Opera might be a good option. Another big help would be adding some more RAM... with a machine of this vintage you might have to look for used RAM online or at used computer stores. I would avoid upgrading to Windows 8 .. too confusing. However you might still be able to get Windows 7. I did an upgrade of my old XP desktop with a new motherboard, processor and more RAM moving to Windows 7 and have been very happy.

[capt. norm]

"But she has Avast and Malwarebytes on it, and so far so good with that."

I have that same combo on my pc's and have not had a problem in a long time. You can run one right behind the other and the second one will often detect stuff that the other misses.

[agincourt1415]

I would recommend using FIREFOX for a browser, less crashes, you can copy and paste favorites. Or in Firefox you type half the web address and it appears like magic. I hardly use favorites my self.