Tonight I followed my own advice and downloaded and installed Firefox. Man, what a browser! It seems to be more nimble than Mozilla; it renders pages faster, but with the same base rendering engine as Mozilla. I like the fact that the tool bar is smaller and has a Google search blank on it. Very handy, indeed!

I also downloaded Thunderbird to handle my mail, this allows me to do away with Mozilla. It’s not that I don’t like Mozilla, it’s just that the download sizes of both Firefox and Thunderbird when added together are smaller than the download for Mozilla. Going on that logic, I can safely assume that the two programs together are taking up less hard drive space than Mozilla was before.

Installation was painless. Firefox allowed me to import all of my bookmarks, password settings and toolbar settings from Mozilla; it will do the same for the Internet Exploder as well. Thunderbird allowed me to import all of my mail settings and my address book from Mozilla; it also had options for importing from Outlook and Outlook Express (both of these are spam-enriched virus farms in my opinion) as well as Lotus Notes and Pegasus. Both also have ways to import from menu items on their menus.

Once configured, I went to get all of the extensions and themes for Firefox and Thunderbird. I now have the Firefox extensions AdBlock and User Agent Switcher. Adblock does just that: blocks any type of ad. User Agent Switcher will allow me to disguise Firefox as Opera or the Internet Exploder so I can go to sites that only allow access via those browsers. Heck, you can even go to Windows Update using the User Agent Switcher! Then I got the Thunderbird extension Contacts Sidebar, which allows a frame on the main window of Thunderbird that holds your address book for easy access. I also installed Macromedia’s Flash Player plugin for Firefox to complete the installation. Now I’m ready to browse with speed and security; something the Internet Exploder can only dream about doing.