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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.

#51

Follow the OP's advice: don't remove IE unless it is unused! You may lose a convert by removing it without explanation. My parents navigate the Internet by clicking the arrow next to the address bar, and clicking the webpage they want to use. The last time I tried converting them, they also used work-related webpages with ActiveX controls, which no sane browser would ever support. Tech is slow outside of the tech ind…

sigh

I hopefully installed Chrome and set it as the default browser on my mom's new Windows 7 machine. Things seemed fine for a while, until I got an e-mail from her saying that whenever she clicked a link from her e-mail (Outlook, unfortunately), she'd get Chrome's "Aw, Snap!" error message -- which, incidentally, she found obnoxious.

Sure enough, it turns out that this is a common issue that occurs when a link in Outlook is followed and Chrome isn't currently running. (Things work fine if it's already up.) Whether this is a Chrome issue or an Outlook issue is unclear to me, but the bottom line is similar to above.

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

#53
post #3

Actually my parents are using a Debian box with Chromium. I found it is a lot easier to manage remotely than a Windows box; it's really low maintenance; they won't grab malware and the Gnome desktop can be really dumbed down - I only left the window switcher, shortcuts for chromium and skype on the panel and on the desktop, time and date, volume control.

Have you somehow got Flash working correctly or don't they use it?

I've never seen a Linux system running Flash as "smoothly" as Windows do. That's on Arch, Fedora and Ubuntu on fairly modern computers with decent specs. 32bit seems to be better than 64bit but it's still slow and buggy.

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

#54
post #3

Actually my parents are using a Debian box with Chromium. I found it is a lot easier to manage remotely than a Windows box; it's really low maintenance; they won't grab malware and the Gnome desktop can be really dumbed down - I only left the window switcher, shortcuts for chromium and skype on the panel and on the desktop, time and date, volume control.

Have you somehow got Flash working correctly or don't they use it? I've never seen a Linux system running Flash as "smoothly" as Windows do. That's on Arch, Fedora and Ubuntu on fairly modern computers with decent specs. 32bit seems to be better than 64bit but it's still slow and buggy.

I've never seen flash run smooth on any os

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

#55
post #41
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I worked for Public Works and Services Canada, and all our sites must be compatble with IE 6 and Firefox 3.0 before they are pushed to production.

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

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you somehow got Flash working correctly or don't they use it? I've never seen a Linux system running Flash as "smoothly" as Windows do. That's on Arch, Fedora and Ubuntu on fairly modern computers with decent specs. 32bit seems to be better than 64bit but it's still slow and buggy.

I've never seen flash run smooth on any os

Fair enough, but it's got much better performance on Windows than on Linux.

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

#57
post #42
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>ActiveX security plugin

Irony at its finest

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

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen flash run smooth on any os

Fair enough, but it's got much better performance on Windows than on Linux.

Sure, but it's still definitely usable on Linux, as much as we'd like to avoid using it. YouTube, Zynga, and most other sites that laypeople use that depend on Flash work acceptably.

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

#59
post #3

Actually my parents are using a Debian box with Chromium. I found it is a lot easier to manage remotely than a Windows box; it's really low maintenance; they won't grab malware and the Gnome desktop can be really dumbed down - I only left the window switcher, shortcuts for chromium and skype on the panel and on the desktop, time and date, volume control.

Have you somehow got Flash working correctly or don't they use it? I've never seen a Linux system running Flash as "smoothly" as Windows do. That's on Arch, Fedora and Ubuntu on fairly modern computers with decent specs. 32bit seems to be better than 64bit but it's still slow and buggy.

I've switched Youtube to HTML5 video and that solved their problems. :) Indeed, Flash is a lot slower on non-Windows platforms but if you have to use it, it's usable.

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

#60
post #3

Actually my parents are using a Debian box with Chromium. I found it is a lot easier to manage remotely than a Windows box; it's really low maintenance; they won't grab malware and the Gnome desktop can be really dumbed down - I only left the window switcher, shortcuts for chromium and skype on the panel and on the desktop, time and date, volume control.

Mine too. Same reasoning. She accepted Ubuntu 100%, which makes sense given it's not much of a different interface than Windows XP for the average user. She even missed it when it was gone for a week (I took her system home to do a fresh install, upgrading 8.04 to 10.04). Forced to use my father's netbook, she said she 'missed the Mozilla fox operating system'. I suppose that does show how much people are tuned into…

> she 'missed the Mozilla fox operating system'

Aww.. That's so cute!

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