Maxthon is my favorite IE Clone!

The Internet is really dependant on web browsers these days, and I say why trust your browser usage with a 4 year old browser open to viruses and Trojan Horses (also viruses). These viruses can easily download themselves from an unused computer, and usually the user cannot delete these viruses with a simple press of the delete key. I think this freeware alternative called Maxthon is a stable alterative. It’s the most popular at Downloads.com. The advantages of this browser is it turns IE6 into a tabbed browser with popup blocker, custom skin plug-in, search engine textbox, ability to download swf (Macromedia Flash) files to the hard drive once thought impossible with Internet Explorer 6. The browser shows your IP address on the bottom right of the application too.

For diehard Netscape users I recommend Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Final, Mozilla’s next generation tabbed browser. It is very stable, never crashes, takes care of 95% of popups, and runs on minimal system resources reducing the change that your computer will crash. However, the Problem with this browser is you have to download Quicktime, Suns java, macromedia flash to it separately. That’s not a big problem for broadband users because it has a wizard /auto download for these plugins, but modem users would be bothered by the download times. Even without the plugins you don’t need them for most sites. Mozilla Firefox is more stable than the latest Mozilla release. One big thing that Mozilla Firefox is that it gets full support by any Linux. It’s Gnome’s desktop internet browser of choice. There is also Konqueror, KDE’s primary Internet Browser. If Linux’s primary internet browser is Mozilla than you can trust the Mozilla Foundation to bring out a quality internet browser. Netscape used the Mozilla source code for it’s 5x and 6x versions, but Netscape released 7.0 when Mozilla Foundation became independent from AOL/Netscape. Netscape 7x is still free, but Mozilla is a better browser of the two. I hear it’s true that Netscape uses Mozilla’s free source code in their most recent web browser, so basically Netscape 7.2 is a replica of Mozilla 1.6. We’ll never know because Netscape 7.2 isn’t open source. Both browsers allow you to download java with the browser.

It’s hard to make a recommendation, since they’re both very popular downloads and both are on my computer. I prefer Firefox unless it’s absolutely necessary that I use Microsoft Internet Explorer. If that’s the case, I use Maxthon.

For loading times both applications load instantly because I have 2 GB of RAM, so I never have multitasking issues with 2D applications…ever. My guess on slower machines less than 1 GHz, Firefox will load a tiny bit faster than Maxthon. It’s not a big issue because both applications load almost as fast as Internet Explorer. It also depends on how much your hard drive is filled up. For those computers with only 20 % free space on their hard drive, multitasking and loading times will decrease by a couple seconds.

I saw Tekken 5 on the Internet yesterday, and it came out 3 days ago according to IGN. The latest Tekken game is suppose to rival Virtual Fighter 4 Evolution’s graphics because IGN rated the graphics a 9.5 out of 10 meaning Namco pretty much exercised the Playstation 2’s hardware to the limit. The game play exceeds Tekken 4 in quality. I hear the DVD has Tekken, Tekken 2, and Tekken 3 as freebees a long with it. So you’re getting four games in one package. Four times the fun…as soon as I own this game. See, I was planning to spend my money on Devil May Cry 3 except that now I found out that the American version of normal plays as if it was the Japan’s hard setting, I might wait a couple weeks until I pick this one up because I don’t want to pick up a game that I do so badly it’s not playable by me I mean.

Then for some odd reason I got into Puff Daddy – I’ll be missing you. Yeah, I know it’s R&B, but you know…nobody can hear me anyways…my parents weren’t home last night.

I brought over 13 videogames over to his house. After we took turns at Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. We raced Dodge RAM vs. Toyota Lightning on the dirt courses and he won in Gran Turismo 4. Then we raced muscle cars in New York and one other city course. We played Street Fighter III Third Strike. I beat him 3 times and he beat me once. When I was playing Mega Man 3 we planned to go into the city to Best Buy to look around. I am mostly a software person so I like the PS2 section and PC section and he and his girlfriend looked at the surround sound speakers and audio players for cars. I really didn’t care because we also went to the Game Stop nearby. I didn’t see Ys VI because it was sold out so I left there not buying any videogame at all. I went to Game Crazy (in Hollywood Video) for the first time. Game Crazy didn’t have it either. The room was basically very cramped. The person there looked like he was from the ghetto or something.

Last night I’ve been listening to music including Jewel – Hands, Allman Brothers – Jessica, Kansas – Dust in the Wind, Carry On My Wayward Son, Rolling Stone – Satisfaction, Ruby Tuesday, Symphony of the Devil, and listening to trance later in the morning too. I like the DJ Micro – Supernova, Binary Finary – 1999, above and beyond – far from in love, airbase – emotion, runaway, PPK Resurrection, a couple John Digweed/Sasha songs, ATB – Lost in Love, etc.

Which brings me to today. Simply, I have only been on the message boards all day because that’s the only thing a man can do when he’s broke? Also have been doing a little work in Visual Basic assignments made it to chapter 6. It was hard, but I’m doing it. I may not need a tutor after all!

This is Ian signing off!