Internet explorer offically gone from my computer

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Here on campus, the student network requires your computer to be only two things in order to be eligble for hook up to the campus network.

- A windows box running XP
- Your browser needs to be IE

If you have anything else, your inelligible for support services and your on your own. So I've toughed it out as much as possible.

However hackers love IE becasue it's sooooooo easy to find flaws to exploit in it's millions of lines of spagetti code.

I just spent the past hour trying to fight off some kind of browser hijacker that got in through IE.

First zone alarm popped up a box asking me to let some program called "xj17cdxcv65.exe" to access the internet. I clicked no and then tried to ctl-alt-del the program away. But before I could do that, Zonealarm suddenly quit and dissapeared off my screen. "xj17cdxcv65.exe" under task manager suddenly went to 100% kernel usage and my network usage suddenly went to 100% too.

What ever it was doing, I wasn't going wait to find out. I yanked out the power cord and restarted in safe mode, did a system restore to last week. The offending program was no longer there.

I killed IE and put on firefox despite the fact I'm violating terms of service on the campus network.

So I making this offical. I've had it with IE

Scott,

When was the last time you contacted tech support for assistance on the college network anyways? And if you did have a problem, it would more likely be related to DHCP, not the browser.

What you need to do is to learn to fake the commands that tech support gives you. That is how linux users have survived for years in Windows only environments (Charter requires Windows and IE but they never had a problem supporting me).

Finally, if you are really worried, I am sure that there is a person in the CS department that is close enough to being an aspie that they will help you if you look hard enough.

Don't sweat it and be glad to get rid of IE.

I guess they like to have their hands busy, and their network full of surprises.


How did you manage to remove IE from your system? I thought that it was impossible.

Anyway, I aplaud your decision. I started using web before Microsoft even noticed it, and never felt any need to convert to IE, neither from Mosaic, Netscape nor Mozilla. Nowadays I use IE exclusively to access Windows Update (which, by the way, not only requires me to use an insecure browser, but also that I turn off the software firewall; fortunately I have another on the router). If I happen to visit a website that does not work in Mozilla, I exit the website.

Heh, yeah... other than Windows Update, if a site doesn't work in either Mozilla or Opera for me, I pretty much decide that it's not worth visiting.

hehe, I've not had a problem with IE for a long time, specially not with sp2's enhancements.

Driver lic address change would not work in Mozilla had to use IE dam gov contract MS has with the state

Then you go to the Drivers License Office and when they complain that you could have done it online, tell them that you could not do it because you do not use MS products. Waste enough of the states resources and they will change.

V111, are you sure? Maybe your Moz could do with an update?

Do MAC users have to stay living in the same house?

Scoots, as a seasoned web developer who is pro-open source and pro-Firefox, I have to applaud you, for you have made the right choice. Resistance is good!

With all due respect, whoever set those TOS on your campus are nothing for me but a bunch of clueless twats. They usually set stupid rules as those since the sysadmins are usually married to whatever Microsoft sold them and don't (or won't) know better, usually a locked-up system that runs on nothing else but PCs. (That wouldn't fly on a place like MIT, for sure).

I have yet to see a campus-wide network that can't be administered using Linux and open-source alternatives. And it would be cheaper for the university too. So don't believe the hype. Plus, since Firefox supports open web standards, it helps making my coding life less miserable.

I still keep IE on my computer but I only use it for mandatory browser testings of the sites we develop, not for browsing - that's what Firefox is for. In the same case, if your college's networking services insist on using IE only, then keep IE - but only for those purposes.

i did update to 1.7.7 mozilla and did call and complain to their help line for web services. Person said it work with IE and Netscape 7.1 both have activex so that could be what was doing it. Btw i tryed a ram only ver of linex and like it iam half way to using a linex box

I used to use IE 5.1 and I liked it very much...then my brother gave me Netscape 7.0, so I use that now, and it's much better...I still have IE though, just in case Netscape gets screwed up.

À mon avis, universities have no right to dictate what operating system and what browser their students use. Sure, their technical support doesn't have to support every possible computer configuration, but students have the inherent right, as owners of their machines, to put whatever operating system and browser they want on their computers as long as they are not violating any laws.

Why would anyone even use Microsoft Internet Explorer? There are better choices on every platform that has IE, and the number of websites that require IE is probably shrinking as percentage of websites.

• Gecko-based browsers
  
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Mozilla Suite
  • Camino Mac OS X only
  • K-Meleon Windows only
  • Galeon GNOME only
  • Netscape
• KHTML-based
  
  • Konqueror KDE only
  • Safari Mac OS X only
  • OmniWeb Mac OS X only
• Opera
• Lynx text only

I still use IE, but a custom coded version (my mate Ste has a partnership w MS and has access to the IE source code.)