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If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

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Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#41

Post by mMark »

seabee wrote: post #10
Maskawanian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use IETab for those specific websites, seamless support.

Not seamless in my experience. There is one site in particular that I need to use whenever my domains need renewing; the javascript menus didn't work in the IE tab, but was just fine viewed from IE itself. Not a clue why.

I've had the same problem with a couple government websites up here in Canada (don't ask why our Canadian Gov websites aren't compatible yet... incredibly frustrating).

Installed a fully secured suite of FF in a law office w/IETabs. Forms wouldn't load in it. Chaos ensued.

None of them ever used FF again and now tell everyone it's "that crappy program tech support installed".

Now I didn't uninstall IE but I hid the icon. Lesson learned. Just leave the icon in their quicklaunch with FF on the left of it. Instruct them to use the orange icon because it's safer and faster. If they don't use it and their computer gets fubar'd you can just tell them that you told them so and fix it up for them.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#42

Post by shard »

Encosia wrote: post #38
sandipc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience, they will marvel at the speed for a little while... until a favorite website doesn't display correctly for whatever reason. Then it becomes my job to play tech support.

Other than Windows Update (which non-technical users shouldn't be running manually anyway), I can't even remember the last site I've been do that didn't work perfectly on Chrome (or Firefox). Examples? On the other hand, we're getting to the point where some newer sites render poorly in IE, run very slowly, are missing features, or don't work at all. HTML5 and intensive JavaScript may be on the verge of reversing the…

Lots of Korean websites are still stuck requiring IE, unfortunately. Many banking sites require some ActiveX security plugin in order to log in.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#43

Post by wwortiz »

w1ntermute wrote: post #40
wwortiz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are a regular computer purchaser (i.e. buy from a manufacturer like hp, dell, etc.) it most certainly is preinstalled along with and old version of java and an old version of flash for their convenience.

Wow, I didn't know this was the case. I always immediately image the hard drive, then wipe it and install Linux. I was under the impression that Java, Flash, and Adobe Reader had to be manually installed. Isn't it bad security-wise to bundle old versions of them? If the user puts off upgrading, they could easily get hit by an old vulnerability.

That is pretty much the main point of my comment is that they bundle these old versions and so many people just click no when java asks to update (I haven't seen a popup for flash so I don't know how many answer yes to that) and adobe only has a tray icon when the reader needs to update (which is perpetually there on so many machines).

One of the biggest annoyances for me with new windows laptops is that many of the manufacturers no longer send the windows cd to reformat if they send a cd at all it is to recover back to the condition with all crapware installed.

HP now has a recovery manager to create recovery disks for you and the last hp computer I saw had to create 5 dvds in order to recover to that state (which would probably require something like a 6 hour reinstall).

It is a sad state if you ask me that you get this now because it allows manufacturers to take away cost by bundling shareware with the computer, just a few years ago toshiba was still shipping legitimate windows cds which allowed you to reformat to normal windows.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#45

Post by w1ntermute »

wwortiz wrote: post #43
w1ntermute wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I didn't know this was the case. I always immediately image the hard drive, then wipe it and install Linux. I was under the impression that Java, Flash, and Adobe Reader had to be manually installed. Isn't it bad security-wise to bundle old versions of them? If the user puts off upgrading, they could easily get hit by an old vulnerability.

That is pretty much the main point of my comment is that they bundle these old versions and so many people just click no when java asks to update (I haven't seen a popup for flash so I don't know how many answer yes to that) and adobe only has a tray icon when the reader needs to update (which is perpetually there on so many machines). One of the biggest annoyances for me with new windows laptops is that many of the…

> HP now has a recovery manager to create recovery disks for you and the last hp computer I saw had to create 5 dvds in order to recover to that state (which would probably require something like a 6 hour reinstall).

And you can only create one set of recovery discs. I was creating recovery discs one time several years ago and the burn process failed. I had no way to start over. I never needed Windows on that computer, but if I had, I'd have had to fork over another $50 to Lenovo to get a set of discs.

That's why these days I just use Clonezilla to image the entire hard disk before Windows can even boot up for the first time. From that image, I can always restore Windows to its exact original state, and it's generally a hell of a lot faster than installing from optical media. Not to mention I can make as many copies of that Clonezilla image as I want, and store it wherever/however I want (local backup vs. offsite backup, optical media vs. hard drive vs. tape drive).

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#46

Post by wwortiz »

w1ntermute wrote: post #45
wwortiz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty much the main point of my comment is that they bundle these old versions and so many people just click no when java asks to update (I haven't seen a popup for flash so I don't know how many answer yes to that) and adobe only has a tray icon when the reader needs to update (which is perpetually there on so many machines). One of the biggest annoyances for me with new windows laptops is that many of the…

> HP now has a recovery manager to create recovery disks for you and the last hp computer I saw had to create 5 dvds in order to recover to that state (which would probably require something like a 6 hour reinstall). And you can only create one set of recovery discs. I was creating recovery discs one time several years ago and the burn process failed. I had no way to start over. I never needed Windows on that compute…

Well it at least seems to verify discs now.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#47

Post by rm-rf »

fjarlq wrote: post #36
rm-rf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then Firefox will announce a zero-day. What will you have gained?

You'll have gained more time to obtain a fix, because Firefox vulnerabilities are not attacked as swiftly and as broadly as IE vulnerabilities.

I haven't seen any evidence of that. Do you have some data that you can share?

One thing that I have noticed is that Mozilla tends to push Firefox fixes out as soon as they are ready, rather than waiting for a monthly patch cycle. For a home user, that's probably good (but annoying). For a corporation, it's royal pain.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#48

Post by rm-rf »

fjarlq wrote: post #37
rm-rf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more interesting question: Is IE8 significantly worse than the alternatives? I think not. All major browsers on all common operating systems have exploitable vulnerabilities often enough that switching browsers will not solve the problem.

But all major browsers are not targeted with the same vigor. IE is targeted much more vigorously because the criminals stand to gain much more from their efforts than if they target, say, Opera. Also, Chrome's sandboxing is designed to assume the browser will have exploitable vulnerabilities, so there are two hoops that the exploit must jump through instead of just one. In this latest IE vulnerability there is only t…

Because of it's market share? Perhaps.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#50

Post by cosmicray »

cookiecaper wrote: post #32
Anechoic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like IE, sometimes you have to use Adode Reader. I deliberately removed Acrobat from my mom's iMac and set Preview.app as the default. Worked fine for years until I got a call a few days ago about a PDF she needed to open to do some work. Sure enough, it was some sort of interactive PDF that only seemed to work with the Adobe Reader.

I've had this before too. I haven't tested for a few versions, but I know that evince was unable to open USPS shipping labels, and I had to go install Acrobat Reader for Linux on my parents' computers. :(

I've had the same problem using Preview. While recent versions of Preview might open the USPS labels, they did not render as well as they did in Acrobat. An earlier version of Preview did a better job of rendering.
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