Regarding your comments about my IE issues. It turned out that Bitdefender was at fault – so yes a browser plugin problem.

I noted that in my blog once I got that sorted out.

Note that there are several features about IE that I really liked. One, that is still lacking in Firefox is the coloured tabs and grouping as such.

My computer is not screwed up James, it has been running faultlessly ever since I got it.

Photoshop Elements maybe, but even that is overkill for this task. < $80.

Since you’re adamant against open source, you can’t use the best solution: Paint.NET, which is free and open source. And which is probably what the majority of people doing work like that are using.

As for IE problems, again, your computer is screwed up. Nobody’s going to say IE is a speed demon, but it doesn’t crash any more than Firefox does. Your IE add-ins, however, are more than capable of crashing the browser.

When I visit that site it shows a message that says that the service is not available in my country…

I will mull over your comments and may change my approach…

I wasn’t talking about Windows Defender. It’s not even AV! I was talking about this:

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/

> I want to live my IT life for as long as possible the way most Windows users I encounter every day do, for some reason the average end-user seems to go around with the impression that “if I paid for it, it must be better.”

You’re wrong, and frankly such attitude disqualifies your experience straight away. Most Windows users will go for free if they can get it. The difference is that most Windows users will also go for familiar and affordable over free and completely different. However, I haven’t actually seen any Windows users who would be “committed” to Defender. Office – yes, especially Excel and Outlook (OO.org Writer is generally much easier to slip past than OO.org Calc). Photoshop (for those who are professionals) – hell yes. But for many smaller things, free is what people are after.

For AV specifically, I see people with either: 1) Norton/Symantec, because it came with their PC out of the box, and then nagged them about “extending subscription”, or 2) AVG or Antivir when they actually bothered to shop around. Well, okay, NOD32 also has some following among people who believe that its superior performance is worth the extra $$$. But that’s about it.

Yes I know, and how I miss it!

Hi Ricardo.

Are you running the full release version or only the RC/Beta?

Could you check your logs on Win7 to see if you have this:

Faulting application name: iexplore.exe, version: 8.0.7600.16385, time stamp: 0×4a5bca42
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0×4a5be02b
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0×00000000000c6cd2
Faulting process id: 0×82c
Faulting application start time: 0×01ca44cbf7217a0f
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 85a53bdf-b0bf-11de-9e06-001377e3a18f

The only plugin that was installed to IE is the Bitdefender AntiPhishing toolbar.

As for skype… okay I checked your link and my add-ons and I do not have the skype add-on. In fact I remember that I explicitly did not allow Skype to install add-ons to IE.

In fac BD AntiPhishing is the only non Microsoft extention to IE that I have at the moment.

In fact it is th only Add-on except for the “Windows Live Family Safety Helper Browser Class.”

Last thing tonite I installed an adblocker from the Microsoft IE addons page and just for kicks that included THREE VIRUSES.

More on that tomorrow, now it is off to bed for me. Thanks for the comment.

It’s absolutely clear that IE8 does not, by default, take 5 seconds for a tab to start or crash 104 times per day. I kind of suspect skype is the root issue there, since it has happened before: http://blogs.msdn.com/askie/archive/2009/07/17/slow-performance-in-internet-explorer-8-after-installing-the-skype-v4-1-application.aspx, though I’ve never tried running IE8 with Bitdefender (which also installs a performance-sapping add-on), so that could be it, or the combination of all the plugins.

Re: BitDefender

On day 1 I made it clear that I do not trust Windows Defender. I am not sure if you read the first day, but the point of this mission is to go for paid software, then free and proprietary, then free and opensource.

I want to live my IT life for as long as possible the way most Windows users I encounter every day do, for some reason the average end-user seems to go around with the impression that “if I paid for it, it must be better.”

Also I need to support Bitdefender every day, and this made it a logical choice – a chance to learn about the software I need to support while going through this.

Re: Photoshop

Thanks for the headsup! I have lived the FLOSS life for so long now that I simply don’t know what options are open to me.

Re: Visual Web Developer Express.

Thanks I will have a look at it.

Why? Get that new free thingy Microsoft had just released. Or AVG. Or Avira.

> I decide I need Photoshop.

Why? There are plenty of options, out of which Photoshop is most expensive (and also completely overkill for your task). Microsoft Expression Web+Design would cost you $150 (http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Purchase.aspx#PageTop).

> Visual Studio .Net: $125.00 on special from MS

Visual Web Developer Express is free, and will most likely be sufficient.