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First, I never say IE was not integral - I said IE is not synounymous with Windows

Which was my point. It is integral and without it, XP won't function.

If you hate Microsoft - by all means use Linux or buy a Mac.

See, that's where you misunderstand. I've been in the business since about 79. I was a teen in 79, but got a job feeding punch cards on weekends. See my FR profile if you wish to be nauseated. I personally support everything and I have a mandrake box here at the house.

I don't hate Microsoft. I do however have a userbase that I and my staff support. I'm moving them over to Firefox for general browsing and only IE when absolutely necessary. At some point in early/mid 2003, we were fighting spyware so much that it was taking 50% of the time of my staff to fix it. I got some of the heavy users(Researchers and fact finders) to switch to Firebird(beta .7 of what became Firefox). The problems evaporated. I now know how to clean just about everthing and how to lock down a machine. Back then, even trusted zones would get spyware sites added.

At this point in time, anyone in the business cannot possible suggest people use Internet Explorer unless absolutely required. IE has access to the local zone and many exploits found run in the local zone and completely hose the PC. No matter how hard they try, malware authors will never be able to cause the havoc to FF as they do to IE.

Which was my point. It is integral and without it, XP won't function.

Well my statement was responding to somebody that said IE = Windows.

I too started my computer career in 1979 - working for Wang Labs - I was 19.I did field support of Minicomputers which included cool stuff like replacing heads and platters in hard drives (monsters the size of washing machines with platters bigger than Frisbees) – ah, the good old days when I carried around an oscilloscope and computers were big and in rooms with elevated floors and glass doors and guys in white lab coats.

I have tons of problems with Sypware at home - but we have no real problems at work. I guess your company always "free range" browsing at work. Nevertheless, what you did sounds smart.

At this point in time, anyone in the business cannot possible suggest people use Internet Explorer unless absolutely required.

My company (not mine personally, the one I work for) has tens of thousands of customers with hundreds of products and all we support is IE.

No matter how hard they try, malware authors will never be able to cause the havoc to FF as they do to IE.

Now that statement is complete nonsense. FireFox has been around for about a month or two and they have already found a serious vulnerability.