Read Google's privacy policy and check out the trade press for stories about what Google collects about you. I won't touch Chrome, won't have it on any machine on the home network. I don't search with Google either. If you value your privacy at all, the only rational attitude toward the Internet is paranoia.
I think Firefox is by far the best of the lot, and for my purposes (i.e. paranoia) it has a lot of useful add-ons for blocking scripts, cookies, ads, and other such crap I don't want to see and don't want on my machine. Slows things down a bit sometimes, but not enough to bother me, and for sites I trust, like this one, I can customize all the settings for what I will and won't allow.
What is the latest version? Please
MIne's at 15.0.1, up to date according to Firefox itself.
Is Firefox better than Internet Explorer?
I certainly think so, though a lot of it may be just a matter of opinion and personal preference. I think Firefox looks better and my impression is that it's faster, though I concede I haven't really tested that in any rigorous way. The trade press that I read indicates Firefox security is better too, and I frankly don't trust Microsoft on security and privacy issues. My impression from the changes wrought in Win7 and Win8 is that they think they run my machine, not me, and they want me to put all my data into their custody in the Cloud. Not gonna happen.
Thanks, now one more question...............Will I encounter any hassles in making the switch, like any danger of losing anything in "my favourites"? P.S. I'm dumb when it comes to computers! My computer is running quite slow, would Firefox speed things up?
Thanks, now one more question...............Will I encounter any hassles in making the switch, like any danger of losing anything in "my favourites"? P.S. I'm dumb when it comes to computers! My computer is running quite slow, would Firefox speed things up?
Shouldn't be any hassle in switching, the Firefox installation routine knows IE is there and will ask you if you want to import various settings and favourites from it, I've never seen that go wrong. Firefox likely wouldn't speed up your computer generally, there are so many possible reasons for a system to be slow that installing one app isn't likely to make a difference. The obvious things to check first are disk fragmentation, for which I use a little thing called Defraggler (Defraggler - File and Disk Defragmentation - Free Download), and the number of processes and services you have running. The latter, however, requires some specialized expertise to know what's safe to shut down and/or uninstall. For that you really need someone in person to look over your shoulder and talk you through things, but as a quick guide, right click on the task bar at the bottom of the screen and run the Task Manager. On XP if it reports much more than about 30 processes running, and on Vista/Win7/Win8 if it shows more than around 50, chances are you've got things using up CPU and memory resources that you can do without. There's a guy calling himself Black Viper who's put together some pretty good and comprehensive guides to such matters. Black Viper's Operating System GuidesIs Firefox better than Internet Explorer? I've been on I/E. for years and hesitate to change now.
Thanks, now one more question...............Will I encounter any hassles in making the switch, like any danger of losing anything in "my favourites"? P.S. I'm dumb when it comes to computers! My computer is running quite slow, would Firefox speed things up?
Quick Update. Lately Firefox has been sucking big time and crashing on multimedia sites<No not Porno.... Hmmmph