This week my machine updated the IE version, from a decent IE 6.0 patch 1-zillion-something to the obnoxious IE 7.0 patch 1-billion-in-two-days-and-counting. Now, as with most machines in a large company environment, there is somewhere an admin that sets up when and how updates are to happen, in this case following the most-cases-normal policy of 'whenever Microsoft tells us to'. All I can say is that I (in fact, my machine) never saw it coming!
Now, I am an honest computer user, with insomuch as a decent approach to using Microsoft products: shout only once per year, work with what you got during the rest. But this is just too much! As soon as IE 7.0 gripped with its ugly hands my system, all things started to go wrong. I couldn't open PDF files anymore. I couldn't open SWF files anymore. I got sick. My plant has started to turn yellow. A few more bombs exploded in Iraq... hm, hm, getting back to my computer's miserable behavior, after contacting the IE 7.0 virus... I had a perfectly working agreement with IE: I use MyIE/Maxton instead. Excellent page loading times, great customization, wonderful way of opening new tabs, or closing them with only two clicks, superb search function, well, simply brilliant! Alas, things were to change when culprit IE 7.0 decided to change security settings after the recipe "If I open it it's great, if it's a third party program (1) kill it and (2) wipe the hard disk. Ooops, I cannot do more than one operation without crashing, so skip (2)." Long story short, the eventual bypasses (days of hard work for several dedicated volunteers, discussions available at http://forum.maxthon.com/lofiversion/index.php?t52427.html and at http://forum.maxthon.com/index.php?showtopic=53701) still don't work in my case. Why? Oh, why, cruel Microsoft?
So, with the death of my hopes of a working, well, work computing environment, I tried several web browsers, including Firefox. No offense to its users, but it's nowhere near Maxthon in terms of default settings. However, it includes a broad selection of tweaks, some of which are quite interesting (see http://www.lifehacker.com/software/firefox-2/geek-to-live-top-firefox-2-config-tweaks-209941.php network.http.pipelining, which make Firefox
fast). Guess I'll have to live with Firefox until Maxthon rebounds...
That's it for today's frustration post!
