Firefox 3.5
Well, after that nasty entry I wrote about Firefox 3.5, I thought I should post an update. I am now using FF 3.5.2 and my problems are gone. It appears that the problem might have been with my Usenet provider, although that doesn’t explain the issues with Customize Google plugin. Anyway, I installed the second update to 3.5 and all is well. I am now using Firefox version 3.5.2 on all of my computers… even my Windows 7 machine. Oh, I should also explain that I am using the Portable version of FF. I know it was designed to be run from a USB flash drive, but I have it installed on my hard drive. FF portable doesn’t add any registry entries, and it doesn’t store temp files in the Documents and Settings folder.
Oh, you may have noticed that I mentioned Windows 7. Yes, I am running Windows 7 on my old computer. I bought a new desktop earlier this year, replacing my 5 year old Pentium P4 system. That wasn’t a bad machine, but iit had Windows XP home version on it. I had upgraded the memory to 1.5GB and had added a second hard drive ( 1-160GB and 1-320GB). My new system has a multi-core processor, 3GB of memory and 750 GB of hard drive, and an EVGA graphics card with dual DVI. It is an HP small-business system, so it came with both Windows XP-Pro, and Vista-Business. And, it came with the full DVD’s! I will never buy a home machine again. The HP small-Business store sells PC’s that are similar to the consumer versions, and are close in price, and they come with full operating system backup DVD’s, not those useless recovery discs that virtually all consumer PC’s have.
Windows 7
I was cleaning up my old computer, un-installing software and erasing disk space. Once I had it pretty clean, it sat around for a while as I tried to decide what to do with it. I was thinking of installing Linux on it. I had tried Ubuntu a while ago on a ancient Sony laptop. But that machine just didn’t have the hardware to support it. I was reading about the Windows test program. It was possible to download an evaluation copy of Windows 7 from Microsoft. I didn’t download the beta version, but I did download RC-1 (release candidate-1). Since my old system was really clean (no software but anti-virus installed), it was simple to install the new Windows. I’ve been running it for almost 3 months now and it has been great. The first thing I notices was that the old system was running noticeably faster. Of course there are a couple of factors contributing to that, minimal software, and I haven’t installed and removed stuff, leaving a cluttered registry yet. But the most obvious change is start-up. The machine stats faster than XP, and it shuts down much faster. So far, all the software I use regularly runs just fine on 7.
There is one big problem though. To upgrade from XP to 7 requires a clean install. Actually, that is the preferred method for any upgrade, but when you have a lot of software installed on a machine, it is time-consuming to have to re-install it. Of course it is one way to clean up your system, cuz you only re-install what you really need. I’m pretty sure I’m going to put Win 7 on Irene’s laptop. I’m sure it will run faster. I’ll have to think about my main system. The RC-1 evaluation copy expires next year, March I think. So, I will have to either buy a copy, or install something else. Maybe I will try Linux then.
