The fox is in Microsoft's henhouse (and salivating)

The success of Firefox shows that open-source software can move from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too.
The New York Times

The story "The fox is in Microsoft's henhouse (and salivating)" published December 19, 2004 at 11:30 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[Gerald Quaglia]

M$ has too much on its plate

Instead of concentrating on is OS, M$ is constantaly going out in all directions, trying to control everthing. Lets see, they tried making PVR(ulitmate tv) which ultimately failed. Xbox, MSN internet, keyboards and mice, PDA software, automotive software, media center software, and ofcourse Office. Gates and Ballmer should drop all of these silly distractions, except for Windows and Office. Users would greatly benefit instead of having to deal with a pile of bloated crap.

Go Firefox

Spyware and adware is MAJOR problem today,I am getting service calls on daily base and many of those repairs can run up to $50-60 and I am cheap tech...and guess what,even after complete overhaul and repair I get some people calling back in less then few weeks with non functional computers.....Yes might be good money but also might drove all people from using computers if they are breaking on weekly basis....And I am serious WEEKLY is what is happening to some folks and its hard to explain to them not to donwload ANYTHING and that spyware removal programs works so-so.
At least with FireFox that problems is minimized and can be avoided in many instances,where with Explorer you can get spyware on pc in a second,and many people dont know how to protect themself.
Microsoft better get their act together IMIDIATLY or things will turn really bad for them...Who wants software thats is unsafe and cost more money to maintain it then to purchase it.
And most people I suggested to upgrade to XP said "NO"......and if they do it will leave bitter tast on them,not good way to build business.
Lucky for Microsoft right now there is no competing OS,but if it shows up like FireFox it will be bad for Microsoft.

[lenkite]

FireFox is Nirvana - for users and developers

If MS does nothing, in another 6 months time, FireFox will eat into 50% of IE's market share. In a year from now, FireFox can be the reigning browser on the web.

What does that mean ? Atleast for a web-developer like me, it means absolute Nirvana. A beautiful , standards-compatible browser on which the the next-generation web-applications can be built at a fraction of the time/cost/effort/blood/sweat &#38; tears it takes now... a solid W3C (<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.w3.org/" target="_newWindow">http://www.w3.org/</a>) implementation on which a whole generation of tools and applications can evolve....

When FireFox wins this war - web developers everywhere (minus those at MS ofcourse) will throw the grandest party on earth to everybody else.

[acarlos1000]

And you can use one of the Extentions to help de development

If you area developer you can use one of the several extentions (which one with some KB) and debug your JavaScript, Edit realtime CSS, integrate with google or wikipedia, and more much more.

There is no way to compare IE and Firefox when you look at the development point of view.

[acarlos1000]

The download size is 100 times smaller

One importante thing, last time I've upgraded my IE, it had to download about 90MB os files, my tons of backup files and stuff.
Firefox has just (JUST) 4,7MB. That's tremendous evolution, clean code, security, best performance, everything in less space.
I am very impressed!!!

[saleen351]

Spyware free since using FF

I downloaded FF the pre 1.0 version months ago, and have not touched IE except for windows update which now is automatic therefore I never used IE ever! Funny thing happed too. I scanned my pc for spyware using spybot and adware, then installed FF and now months later my surfing habits are exactly the same and I HAVE ZERO SPYWARE!!!! MS has their heads where the sun don't shine. Now if I could only afford a MAC, I'd be set for life.

[unixrules]

Why my father likes IE better

I used to be over at my parent's house WEEKLY to
fix my father's computer. He was constantly being
hijacked and all munged up with spyware and popups.
I switched him to Firefox and now he never sees me anymore.

[rvergara]

Car industry analogy

"The analogy comes straight from Schare. "It's like buying a car," he said. "If you want to get the latest safety features, you have to buy the latest model."

I believe a car company would recall a whole production batch for fixing if the safety defect is serious, will fix and deliver at no cost to the customer.

Fortunately we have a competitor that will take my browser in and replace it with a properly working model (and make).

Thanks Mozilla.org

Ramiro

[technewsjunkie]

"Buy a new PC". Antitrust anyone?

I love how Microsoft always claims it's doing things "in the
interest of consumers" and here is just one example where they
tell those same consumers to "buy a new computer" - to fix a
problem they enabled through shoddy software.

Breasy.com interesting as well

For tabbed browsing without having to download anything, I've turned to Breasy.com. It's just a website that has implemented tabbed browsing with javascript and iFrames and all that, so I can use it anywhere and I've got all my bookmarks, notes and tabbed browsing anywhere I go without having to download firefox or anything.