I dunno about it just yet. I switched over a few months ago, and found it ok, the (current) lack of security vulnerability was nice, but the tradeoff seemed to be that Firefox would take forever to load java pages(such as the weather service radar.) and freezing all the other tabs and windows during the java page's loading process. After installing Firefox I could no longer get IE updates from the Microsoft website, the page would start to scan for applicable updates and then give an error message.
But it got even worse after I switched last week to the latest Firefox release. Ever since then the java problem has been magnified, literally taking 2 minutes to load the NOAA weather radars or often hanging up, so that I'd have to do ctrl-alt-del to get out of the frozen screen and losing all my other tabs and windows. Tried removing java and reinstalling it, but no change. Also loading some pages with a large number of photos produces similar freezes and slowdowns(though not nearly as often), occassionally requiring a restart to go to any more webpages. Something went wrong in the upgrade, as the new Firefox is unable on startup to load up my homepage, I have to actually hit the homepage icon to get started. What is really weired is that now these same problems take place when I try to use IE instead on the java sites.
Routinely scan the computers with Norton, Ad Aware, Spybot, Pest Patrol, have a good firewall, and auto update all plus Spyware blaster, so my machine is clean. Am on ME(yeah, I know that XP would be better, but am not yet ready to take the time, risk, and hassle of an upgrade to this machine.)
Any suggestions are appreciated, I haven't had time to scour the Firefox sites and figure out what exactly are the problems.
Ah hah! See my post #76. Finally someone else who has the same problem! I thought I was going nuts!
hmm. It wouldnt be a java probelm (the java gets down on the server then sent to the browser) I'll try the NOAA when i get home and see what happens.
Yeah ME sucks. As for the updates i dunno about that either. It seems that if MS was purposely sabatoshing updates using a different browser it would get sued (again)
Unfortunatly these sorts of things sort of just happen. You can call it whatever you like it sort of happens. There is a really good reason why ME didnt last long and XP was tossed out the door quickly. You might want to invest in the upgrade.
It sounds like you have a lot of background processes running as well. All that stuff you listed will kill web traffic. Like jack the ripper style killing. you figure your limited to bandwidth and computer power. Then all that traffic gets checked by the firewall (delay) then norton(more delay) and on and on.
As for what to *do* about it. Well i dunno really ;) if i were you i'd toss ME. reflash the harddrive then be maticulas in what you need on your computer. If you really need adware spyware spybegone spyremover. Your doing something wrong. with firefox you only really need one of them. The spyware that gets on the comp will be mainly *real* spy ware such as cookies that track your websites and what not.
also. Never i mean never :) install the latest upgrade or patch. Such as the XP service pack 2 fiasco. let other people dork up their computers first and let microsoft fix it before you put it on your computer. Check out forums and what nots.
hope some of those tidbits helped. If not...umm disregard ;)