While there are many reviews about netbooks after a few days of use, you hardly find any indication on how the person continues to use it. We all know that new toys are cool in the beginning, but how do new toys affect our habits after a certain period of time?

Over the years, I’ve used numerous devices for different purposes. My first true gadget was a 3com Palm Personal, which I later upgraded to a Pro, so I could use it with my cell phone (infrared) and use the internet on the go. I ten went on to a Handspring Visor Platinum. It was not until I got an iPaq 2210 PocketPC when I started getting into portable video and software development, and after a while, I was forced to get a few devices people requested support for. When I got a PSP, the iPaq was the first gadget that ended up in the drawer next to the Handspring. Due to the bigger screen, as well as the better video format, the PSP became my gadget of choice to watch movies on the go. Bulkier than the iPaq, but it made up for it with the bigger screen. When Apple came out with the first Video iPod (5G) I needed one to make DVD Catalyst work with it (I love this job) and opted for the 60GB model. Eventhough the iPod had a smaller screen, it replaced the PSP due to the storage size. It was great to carry around 1 device filled with more video content than I could watch in a week of non-stop viewing. 10 seasons of Friends, Southpark, Futurama etc, and still have lots of music on there to boot.Next came the Microsoft Zune 30. The first Zune. While it features a slightly bigger screen, it never managed to replace my iPod. The colors looked bad and washed out, and the Zune desktop software was (still is in my opinion) a resource hog and a pain to navigate. I picked it up, made it work with DVD Catalyst, and then it went straight to the gadget drawer.

After the Zune came the Apple iPod Touch. If you have used DVD Catalyst for a while, and followed the website(s) you know how much I love my iPod Touch. While it’s only the 8GB first model, it has replaced all my portable devices with it’s capabilities. It even replaced my computer for answering support questions at nights. Bigger screen, better video quality, and while not as much room as my 60GB iPod, it still has room enough to fit a season of 24 on it with room for a few apps.

Unfortunately, the one thing that caused me to look into a replacement for it is due to some “google labs” options I use in Gmail for providing support. While I type all support questions by hand, there are a few things that are always the same, so I use something called “canned responses” for those whenever needed. Reset DVD Catalyst to it’s defaults, and a thank you note for a PayPal purchase with the link (paypal doesn’t send these out by itself, so I have to do that manually). Unfortunately, for some reason, this did not work in gmail/safari on the iPod Touch, so for sending out those emails, I always had to go back to my computer to answer.

So, because of the Gmail issue, and because I wanted one since they came out, I picked up an Asus eeePC.

I wrote a few articles already on the eeePC, please refer to those for initial impressions, and impressions after a few weeks.

2 Months later.

The eeePC has settled in nicely into my life.

It has replaced my gadgets for the most part. It plays video’s in whatever format I have, and because it runs a full webbrowser (firefox) I have no issues using it for work-emails. During the day, it sits next to my development system, and I use it for emails and non-work stuff, such as checking certain websites for news (slashdot for example). During software testing, when my development system is basically in use, I use it for minor development stuff, and at nights, when I turn off my workstation, I close the screen of the eeePC to put it in standby, and have it close by when watching TV. Once in while I pick it up to check for support emails, or look something up about what’s on TV and such.

When I go somewhere, I usually take it with me, depending on where I have to go and what I have to do. It allows me to keep myself entertained, or do work (if an internet connection is available).

While it has a few games on it, the most used application on the eee is Firefox. It’s always open, and even when the netbook wakes up from standby, it responds fast.

Essential upgrades:

The only issues I have with the eeePC is the out-of-the-box performance and battery life.

I picked up the cheapest 8.9″ harddrive-version of the eeePCs, the 900HD, so it came with the smaller battery. I replaced that with one I picked up from eBay. The replacement battery ($60 or so) is quite big, and sticks out at the back, which is a bit annoying, but the increased batterylife is well worth it. With the defalt battery, it was not capable of playing 1 full movie. The battery ran out near the end of a 2hour movie. The new battery enables me to watch about 4 hours of videos.

The hard drive, while decent in size, was quite slow. The seagate 160gb I replaced with a 320GB 7200rpm Western Digital, and the whole system is a lot more responsive. Especially with Firefox getting bigger and bigger, and a virus scanner running in the background, the difference in speed is phenomenal.

The memory. The eee came with 1GB of memory, which is plenty for Windows XP, however, with the video card taking a share, as well as a few startup programs such as a virus scanner, you will notice a slowdown when you have a few programs running (or firefox with 10 tabs open) I expanded this to 2GB, and everything feels a lot smoother. Switching between running programs is a breeze.

The size:

The 8.9″ eeePC is just the right size for me. The screen is big enough to show me information I need and use without having to scroll, and the physical size of the device is just small enough to make it easy to pick up.

All in all, I’m quite satisfied with my $250 netbook, now if only it had a dual-core processor and a better video card. I hope they come out with a 9″ ION based netbook.

My eeePC 900HD came equipped with a basic 3-cell battery, which, when I put it through it’s first movie, is not capable to play a 2 1/2 hour movie on a single charge. Because of this, I’ve been putting some thought on what affects batterylife during playback, and how the viewing experience can be enhanced.

*Brightness: One of the first, most logical things to keep in mind is the screen brightness. The brighter the screen is set, the more power it drains, and as a result, the battery drain is quite significant. Reducing the brightness will increase battery life significantly.

*Networking: a wireless networking connection takes power to establish and maintain a connection, and continiously puts strain on the battery as well. Turning it off while watching a movie will save battery life tremendously.

*Drive activity: the location of where you have the movie, or if there are programs running in the background. A harddrive or a cd/dvd drive all have moving parts, and when used for video playback they will be continuously be running to be able to run the movie. A Solid State disk, or even a flash card will reduce power useage due to the lack of moving parts.

The above is quite obvious, however, what many people do not realize is that the format of the video makes a huge impact as well.

H264/AVC Video is very processor-demanding. Some of the lower-end systems might even have issues playing video files in this format properly, and on all portable systems available at this time, the processor will need to run at full-speed to be able to keep a fluent playback. On portable devices, such as Apple’s iPod and iPhone devices, some newer Windows Mobile devices, and the upcoming Netbooks with Nvidia chips in them feature hardware acceleration for this video format, which reduces the strain on the processor enough to eliminate the need to run at full speed.

DIVX AVI is less processor demanding, but depending on the version used (DIVX5/DIVX6/DIVX7), there is a difference. DIVX6 and 7 include additional features to improve quality, which also increases processor demand. The DIVX codec options also include quality enhancement filters, such as “deblocking” and “deinterlace” which also put additional strain on the processor, keeping it running at full speed.

XVID AVI is a bit less straining on the processor than DIVX, but the Windows installer (Koepie’s version) does include various options for quality enhancement that are enabled by default.

MPEG1 MPEG2 is considerably less processor demanding than any of the other formats. Even very old computers (Pentium 1, 166Mhz) are capable  of playback of these files, but due to the bigger file size of these files, the hard drive speed comes in to play.

Windows Media WMV Depending on the format itself (VC1, WMV9, WMV8, WMV7) the processor requirements differ greatly. VC1 is used for HD video content, and while it offers great quality, the processor useage is quite high as well. WMV9, the non-HD variant of VC1 is less demanding on the processor, while maintaining a good quality. WMV8 uses less than WMV9, and WMV7 uses less than WMV8.

H263 3GP This format is specifically designed for Cellphones, and requires very little processor power, but results in terible quality on bigger screens.

The way the files are created plays a big difference in performance requirements. Due to its initial design for “portable” devices, DVD Catalyst does not use any real “advanced” options (cabac,quantisizers, degaus etc) for it’s normal conversions. While the “HQ” profiles do use some of them, the default profiles are optimized for sped and compatibility, resulting in faster conversions at good quality. For playback this also assists in battery-life. A basic rule that can be used is that the faster the conversion completes, the less battery-power it will use. This rule does not really apply to people who use the latest systems with the CoreI8 50Ghz 32-core processors, but for the average computer user it is a fairly safe indication.

Besides the compression format itself, the other difference between these is that to maintain the same quality the file-size is directly affected. The higher the processor requirement, the smaller the resulting file can be while maintaining the same visual quality. With the same screen size resolution settings, a H264/AVC video file can be about half the size of an XVID file of the same quality, and an MPEG2 file will be about 4x as big as an XVID file on the same visual quality.

While the file-size would theoretically be an additional battery drain, most video player applications actually “stream” the file from the harddrive. They continuously read from the file to direct it to the screen. So in most cases, it does not matter if the file is big or small, because the drive that actually contains the video file is still used during the whole time you are watching the movie. To eliminate this, a video player application would need to have a memorybuffer that would load a portion of the movie, and then stop accessing the drive until it hits a certain percentage in the buffer so it can load the new data again. In this case, the file size does make a difference, because the bigger the file, the more times the buffer needs to be filled. at a buffer of 64MB, if we have an MPEG2 movie of 4GB in size, or a 3GP movie of 120MB in size, the difference is considerably. The 3GP movie will only need to fill the buffer twice, once every hour if we are talking about a 2 hour movie, while the MPEG2 movie will have to fill the buffer 64 times, or about once every 2 minutes.

With the recent acquisition of an Asus eeePC, I figured it’d be interesting to write something in regards on how to achieve reasonably fast conversions on performance-impaired computers. The information provided here applies to video conversion in general.

The Asus eeePC (900HD) has a 900Mhz Celeron processor. For conversions, Celeron processors (which have limited memory (cache) on the processor) are optimized for “Office” use, internet use, word processing and basic spreadsheets, and are not designed for processor-intensive tasks such as video conversion. While most systems that have a Celeron processor feature a speed measured in Ghz, the 900Mhz version used in the eeePC has a speed reminisent of computers of 8 years ago. While the technology used inside it’s core has significanly changed, it is not really capable of handling more demanding tasks.

So what affects conversion speed?

To be able to speed up conversions, we have to look at what conversion actually is. With video conversion, often called transcoding, we indicate the process of changing video from one format to another. DVDs come in a certain video format (MPEG2) while video files from the internet come in certain formats as well (AVI, DIVX, XVID, FLV, MPV etc) While there are devices that are capable of playback of all these different types of video content, many are not, and as of such, the various different video formats will have to be changed (converted) into a format that can play on a particular device. For most current devices (Apple’s iPod/iPhone, Sony’s PSP, Microsoft’s Zune), the format of choice is MPEG4, so DVDs (MPEG2) will need to be converted to MPEG4, DIVX needs to be converted to MPEG4, etc etc.

Besides the video format, many portable devices have certain limitations. Portable video players are designed to have an acceptable battery life (so you can watch one or two full movies on a single charge), and to achieve this, certain trade-offs have been made when thee devices were created. Many portable media players can only handle video files of a certain quality range, and only within certain screen size specifications. To make video files compatible with these players, besides converting content in the proper format, changes to the quality, as well as the screen size also have to be made.

Besides the actual conversion, things such as how the original video content is accessed, where the converted content is stored also play a major part in conversion speed.

How do we speed things up?

The main rule to keep in mind is that there is ALWAYS a trade-off. To achieve faster conversions, you WILL compromise quality.

Conversion format: Most devices accept more than just one video format. For example, all the Apple devices, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV. These can handle 2 formats of MPEG4. MPEG4 SP (Simple Profile) and MPEG4 AVC (Advanced Coding Profile, aka H264) MPEG4 AVC is used by Apple’s own iTunes video content, and offers the best possible quality (it’s the same format used for Bluray video) however, it is quite processor demanding. MPEG4-SP, the original MPEG4 format, is less processor demanding, and as a result, it is a lot faster on older systems. The iPhone (Fast) profile uses this format, and on the eeePC, this format converts at allmost 2x real-time speed (1 hour for a 2 hour movie) while the AVC format (iPhone Standard profile) converts at about 0.5x realtime, 4 hours for a 2 hour movie.

Scaling (screen size): If the video content that is converted has a bigger resolution that what the device supports, it will need to be scaled down to the lower device resolution. For DVD’s the original screen size is usually around 720×480. When this is converted to a Zune with a screen size of 320×240 for example, the video will be reduced in size to fit that screen size. To preserve as much quality as possible, during conversion additional calculations are made to scale down the video. For movies with a big screen size (bluray rip for example), that are being converted to a device with a smaller screensize (such as the Zune) it takes longer to go through the whole video picture to make it the proper size. The bigger the difference in size, the more processing power is needed to perform this task.

Picture quality: This connects to both the conversion format and the scaling mentioned above. The conversion format selected determines the way the video quality is adjusted. Some formats compare each video picture, and just store the differences with a certain (key-)frame, while other formats perform certain calculations to achieve the format conversion. Each format works differently, and the wy this works is too complicated for this particular article, and will be covered in another topic. The video quality setting (kbps) determines how much “data” can be used for the video during a certain time. This determines the resulting filesize, as well as how the picture looks. The higher the quality, the better the video will look when completed, however, higher quality also means that there will be more time spend during conversion to achieve the quality.

Drive speed: While not as important on slower computers, the drive speed does affect conversion speed. The conversion can only work as fast as it has information to work with, so if you are converting a DVD, and the drive is too slow, the conversion will be waiting for the DVD drive to deliver the information it needs to convert. In a similar manner, the drive where the created files are stored. When the conversion has converted a piece of the movie, it needs to store this, and if the location where the files are saved is too slow, the conversion is paused untill the data is saved to the drive.

A few tips for drives:

* Never set the output folder to a flash-drive/pendrive/SD/CF card. These drives do not have a consistent data rate, and you will experience severe slowdowns during conversion.Convertto your computers harddisk first, and when done, copy the files over to the drive. This is a lot faster.

* Never convert directly to the memory of your device. Most devices (PalmOS, Windows Mobile)use some form of sync-software to establish a connection to your device, and when you convert directly to your device, this sync-software will continiously be “assisting” in the data transfer. This will slow down conversions severely. Convert the files to your compute’s harddisk first, then transfer the completed files over.

* Never convert from an external drive to the same external drive.If you are using an external harddisk for your video files, converting to and from the same drive will result in “traffic” jams during conversion. Data is being read from, and send to the harddisk at the same time, causing the conversion to be quite slow.  Convert the files from your external harddisk, and save them to your computer first. When the conversion is finished, move them to your drive.

The above screenshot of DVD Catalyst 3 shows a conversion of “Navy Seals” (first 10 minutes of the movie only) with 4 different conversion settings. Conversions were done on an Asus eeePC 900HD (900Mhz Celeron), with an external USB2 Lite-On DVDdrive to the internal harddisk of the system.

iPhone (Standard) Profile : 480×320 resolution, AVC (h264) video format (500Kbps) 0.77x realtime (2 1/2 hours for a 2 hour movie)

iPhone (Fast) Profile : 480×320 resolution, MPEG4 SP video format (500Kbps) 1.83x realtime ( 1 1/4 hours for a 2 hour movie)

iPhone (HQ) Profile 720×320 resolution, AVC (h264) video format (700Kbps) 0.68x realtime (3 hours for a 2 hour movie)

iPhone (Small) Profile 288×192 resolution, AVC (h264) video format (180Kbps) 1.73x realtime (1 1/2 hours for a 2 hour movie)

After going through my daily news website collection, I stumbled upon an announcement from Archos (the PMP company, not the Sony DVD protection)

http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/index.html

It’s running Windows 7, (which means it will be a little while before release) which makes it quite interesting already, but the estimated pricing of around $500-600 makes it a perfect little device to work on the go.

What better innovation for a MiniPC than to get rid of keyboards?

ARCHOS once again is leading the way in innovation, with the introduction of the MiniPC of the future, the ARCHOS 9PCtablet. The ARCHOS design team has coupled groundbreaking design with the most advanced technologies, by leveraging their expertise from the design of the Internet Media Tablets. The new PC combines the performance of a high end PC with breathtaking aesthetics, excellent ergonomics and a tactile interface that ARCHOS has built their reputation on. Pure lines, extreme thinness (0.63”), less than 800g and a stunning black finish, the ARCHOS 9 pushes the boundaries of elegance and simplicity on a MiniPC, fulfilling all expectations of the most mobile users.
Intuitive and easy to use, the ARCHOS 9 delivers an unrivalled user experience, and is set to replace the traditional computer. Without a physical keyboard, it provides a virtual keyboard, very easy to use on the the resistive touchscreen, and has an optical trackpoint to let you surf the web, communicate, work and entertain anywhere.

The ARCHOS 9 incorporates the new Intel® ATOM™ Z515 processor, an 80 GB¹ hard disk, Bluetooth to tether wireless accessories, and 2 antennas to receive DVBT TV with diversity reception.

And what’s more, the ARCHOS 9 is running Microsoft® Windows 7, the latest version of the most commonly used operating system in the world.

The ARCHOS 9 provides all the power and comfort needed for daily usage.
It combines an impressive performance and a rich multimedia experience to deliver the most advanced PC in the world. Be ready to discover it.

eeePC 900HD Desktop Screenshot

In the past, I looked at the Toshiba Libretto series, but these were too limited in specifications, and also at the Sony UX series, but these were too expensive. When the eeePC’s were announced with the low price and still decent specifications, they have been on my wish-list ever since. So, a few weeks ago, I spend some time looking at the various models, and to get an idea of the sizes, I visited the local computer store. The 900HD was on special, so I picked that one.

The specs are quite limited, especially the processor (900Mhz Intel Celeron) , but with some tweaks, I managed to get it running smoothly.

So, why do I need it?

You never “need” another computer. With my work with DVD Catalyst, I always “need” new toys, and the eeePC is no different. Right now its sitting next to an 13” Macbook and a 17” Dell laptop, so why would I need 3 laptops? The Dell and the Macbook are both used for development and testing. Usually one is running conversions, while the other is used for the rest of the work. The Macbook runs Windows Vista Ultimate (bootcamp) which is my main development platform. The Dell runs Windows XP Media Center, and besides TV recording tests, DVD and video conversion test, it’s the only machine I have that is capable of running “Fallout 3”.

As for the eeePC, its main use for me is portability. A few years ago, I only had the 17” Dell, and when my wife was in the hospital for a procedure, it was quite annoying to carry it with me every day. I stayed overnight with her, but had to go back home to feed the cats, shower, laundry etc. When I got the Macbook, this became easier, but again it was a little bit to carry around. The eeePC, and especially the 900-series (the 1000-series would defeat the purpose because it would be close to the size of the Macbook), is a lot easier to carry around. It would actually fit in my coat-pocket.

So, after two weeks of eeePC, what have I used it for so far?

The main use has been to check emails while watching TV at night. I use GMAIL, and a few Google Labs additions to handle my email. When someone purchases DVD Catalyst through the Paypal button on the Tools4Movies website, I use something called “Canned Responses”. It basically allows me to send a draft email as a reply, and I can keep sending this response over and over. Before the eeePC I used my iPod Touch to check emails, but for some reason, Canned Responses does not work, so whenever I had to use it, I had to go to a laptop, and send the response from there. With the eeePC, I can do it right away.

Besides the email-use, I have used the eeePC to watch a movie, while the wife was watching her own shows. Again, I used to do this with the iPod Touch, but the bigger screen just makes it a bit more comfortable. The thing I did not like was that the battery of the 900HD is not big enough to handle a 2 ½ hour movie.

Ofcourse, I have installed my development tools on the eeePC as well. The main reason why I wanted a small PC was so I could work wherever I wanted, and while the screen size is a limitation, the eee has assisted me already in troubleshooting some bugs with DVD Catalyst. For giggles, I installed DVD Catalyst 3.80 on it when I got it out of the box, and right away I ran into a minor problem with the output folder. On my other machines I did not experience this issue, but on the eee, it allowed me to figure out what was happening, and what I needed to do to fix it. In addition, running conversions on it actually exceeded my expectations. It’s not something I would recommend, but in lack of better options, it is good to know it actually does have a little bit of power to do it.

So, what do I have running on it?

Delphi 7. The development application used for DVD Catalyst

iTunes. Because I converted most of my collection for my iPod Touch.

Mozilla Firefox. I use Firefox for all my internet browsing, and by copying my profile over, I have it setup the same on all my systems.

LocationFree Player. I have a Sony LocationFree base station connected to my TiVo, and with the software, I can watch my TiVo from any location with internet access. I did not expect this to work properly because the video format used (H264/AVC) for it is quite processor-demanding, but it actually works really good.

Pocket Tanks. Classic artillery game, the best of it’s kind, and highly addictive.

Plants vs Zombies. The new Bejeweled/Peggle game from Popcap. Again, highly addictive.

Of course there is a bunch of other stuff on there, but the above is the main part of it.

First thing I did when I got it was replacing the harddisk. I had a 200GB 7200RPM harddisk as a spare, and decided that the 160GB 5400RPM harddisk would make a better spare, and that the faster harddisk would be better. Honestly, I have not seen much of a performance difference. As a test, I used the harddisk from the eeePC in my Dell, and Fallout 3 runs nice from it.

I played around with upgrading the memory, but with more memory I did not notice much performance gain either. Because I make use of the Hibernate feature, which writes the memory to disk, 2GB would actually slow things down for me.

I did a clean restore from the Asus DVD, which unfortunately is a Ghost image, and not an actual Windows XP install, and removed almost all the extra software that was installed. An old version of Adobe Reader, Skype etc. Then I installed Office 2007 on it, and did all the Windows Updates (it comes with ServicePack 2). Stuck AVG Free on it, and installed my own software needs. Then I did some tweaks by disabling services, restore, and a couple of registry hacks to boost performance. Tweaked Firefox to use the memory instead of the harddisk for cache, and as a last trick, I installed the “XP Royale” theme to make it look a bit nicer. The Royale Theme is an official Microsoft Theme for Windows XP that resembles the one used in Media Center.

And this is about it for 2 weeks of eeePC ownership.

I’ve been eyeballing these since they were first released, but with the struggles the last year with the website and stuff, I never managed to get to it. Finally friday I picked one up at the local store for $250. Cheap, but it does the job.

It’s main use is for me to be able to quickly answer support emails when I am not working. I used to use my iPod Touch for this, but with some features I use with Gmail (“canned responses”, for people who purchase with Paypal) the browser on the iPod Touch just doesnt work. I tried numerous things, including running “desktop mode” but it is just not supported on the iPod.

So, with a PC, small, but still running a full-blown windows-version, I can do what I need to do.

I chose the 8.9″” version mainly or its size. I use a 13″ macbook for development, next to a 17″ dell e1705, and both are a bit too big to lug around for appointments. For longer use, the eeePC is a bit too small for typing comfortably, but for something quick, it works just great.

I’m not too happy about the processor, a celeron 900mhz, but I guess I just have to accept the fact that I will not be using the eee as aditional conversion machine. It does convert better than expected though.

Ofcourse I already tried a few things with it that it is not intended for, but I will go into that with a later post.

What is LocationFree?

Sony’s LocationFree system is often compared to Slingbox. Both systems work as a box that sits between your TV signal and the internet. It enables you to watch the content of the connected device, it being either a DVR (Tivo), a Satellite receiver or a DVD player, and control it over an internet connection.

A couple of years ago, when I still used a PSP for video playback on the go, I stumbled upon information about LocationFree. The PSP has this feature build-in, and after doing some research to find out what it was, I decided to see what it was all about, and ordered a Base Station from eBay. The hookup was fairly simple. The LFB-20, the base station I have, features 2 RCA input connections, enabling it to connect 2 devices at once, and includes ports for IR-Blaster for each of the connections to be able to provide access to the functions of the device.

How do I use it?

The setup changed a bit throughout the years, It had our 2 Tivo’s (Series2) connected to it for a while, but currently, it’s hooked to just 1 Tivo (mine). I have given a friend of mine, located overseas, full access to it, to watch certain Sports that he could otherwise not watch. With the Tivo connected to it, the timezone difference is a non-issue, and because I don’t use the Tivo myself that much when I am home, he can record and watch all the shows he wants. For me, I use it whenever I am “stuck” in a location for a while, and do not have anything else to do. When my wife was in the hospital, we used it to catch up on some shows we missed, and she was also quite happy in being able to watch her favorite channels that the hospital TV ystem did not have. It takes a little while to get used to the few seconds of lag when skipping through the commercials, but all in all, it has proven to be very useful. Once everything is setup, it just works. Quality of the video is great, thanks to the use of the AVC format, and with the capability to actually change channels, it provides a perfect viewing experience for any location where you have internet access.

Firefox 3.5 on an eeePC Screenshot

Everything seems to feel more responsive, and even most of the addons I had did work fine. Only the theme needed to be replaced because it was not compatible.

Firefox is an internet browser, and is similar in functionality as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari. The main advantage of Firefox for me is that it provides a “safe” browsing experience. While unintentional, with doing research on the internet you do get exposed to various malicious websites. Websites infected with some form of virus, or popups of fake virus scanners that ask you to click here to fix your PC. With browsers such as Internet Explorer, these issues are quite hard to get rid of, mainly because Internet Explorer is rooted deep into Windows itself, and if it crashes for some reason, it usually takes something else you have running with it. While the newer versions are safer, they still account for most of the virus/spyware related issues on computers today. Safari, Apple’s web browser, is similarly rooted into Apple’s Mac OS operating system, and while more resilient towards these issues, it has its quirks as well. With Firefox, which works as a separate application, the bad stuff has less of a chance to do serious harm.

I personally have used Firefox back when it first came out. Originally part of Netscape, later made into Phoenix, Firebird and then Firefox, I’ve grown accustomed to how it works, and what it is capable of. From its early days, it offered tabbed browsing, and while now commonly found in all similar programs, it was groundbreaking. I use a “bookmark folder”,Daily, which contains bookmarks to about 10 sites I check a couple of times a day. All I have to do is rightclick on the folder, and click on “Open all in tabs”, and it will take me to the first listed page, and opens the rest to load in the background. Rather than having to wait for each page to load, I can quickly skim through the sites for news items. In addition, when doing searches, things get even easier. While skimming through search results from a site like Google, I just control-click (hold down the ctrl-key and click) on a link to open it in a tab, enabling it to load in the background, while I continue skimming through the results. When I have a few sites selected, I click on the tabs to view the information on the selected website.

All in all, I highly recommend Firefox for any internet user.