Internet Explorer 7 is a Frikkin Nightmare!

Unh, uhn. Don't GO THERE, girlfriend. You won't like it. Stay away from Internet Explorer 7 like it was the plague.  Because it is.  Tabbed browsing?  Hah. You'll be the one pickin' up the tab, I can promise you that. Easy-to-access-RSS feeds?  Yeah, right.  As in Reboot, Sweat, Swear. Easily read fonts?  Sweetheart, how clearly can you see when you're crying?  

Look, I know this is a political blog, and some of you will question my writing this diary.  But hey ...DailyKos is a computer blog. We're computer people.  Some computer news affects us.  And I wouldn't be a friend of this site and the fine people I've met here, unless I warned you: IE 7 is a frikkin nightmare.

I don't ask much out of life.  I don't ask much of the world -- at least, not for myself.  I live a small life, on a very limited income, no vacation trips (ever), no restaurants (ever), new clothes from thrift stores -- and eBay.  But at least I have the internet.  Through the internet, I have DailyKos, the New York Times (at least, the parts not blocked by the firewall), I have The Hermitage Museum, I have emails to friends I never actually get to see, and the family I rarely get the chance to visit.  

Mind you, I have dial-up service. I live in an area so sparsely populated that ISPs choose not to offer broadband at all. So I have to be patient with my computer when I'm online at the best of times.  It takes forever to load a page. A DKos diary with more than 200 or so comments is already balky, and a diary where people post pictures is a downright marathon.  Forget YouTube and video files -- for the most part, that ain't gonna happen unless I have a couple of hours to spare downloading a 10-minute file (I kid you not).

But as I say, I have the internet, and I love the internet.  It's a lifeline.  All I ask is that my pages load within a reasonable number of minutes, that my browser stay open, and that my programs work.

So why Bill Gates can't manage my humble needs is a mystery to me. Because let me tell you right now: Internet Explorer 7 doesn't do any of these things.  It now takes longer than ever to load a page.  It crashes, or stalls, or hangs up -- or threatens to do so -- every single time you close a page.  I mean: Every. Single. Time.  You close a page and the whole desktop blinks and sputters like it's got a neurological disease.  If it does crash, it kindly offers to send an error report -- and then, that crashes, too.  I'm in my Task Manager dozens of times a day, now, just trying to "end program" for some stuck thing or another.

Worst of all, at year end my McAfee security suite needs to be renewed -- and guess which major security suite doesn't support IE 7?  Because ...well ...why would Microsoft deign to coordinate its product with other major products?

IE 7 is a beta.  It doesn't say so on the first or even the second page of the download (because, of course, Microsoft is too concerned with making you re-re-recertify that you're running genuine Windows than do something like explain what the frik they're recommending that you download.)  But the beta is not intended for the normal, run-of-the-mill computer owner.  It's intended for reviewers and such like, people who know enough -- and have the resources -- to deal with serious issues spawned (and I use that word advisedly) by this abortion.

And Microsoft certainly doesn't tell you what a bug-ridden, godforsaken, vicious little virus of a browser IE 7 is -- you don't find that out until 24 hours later, when you Google "Internet/Explorer/7 problems" or "IE7 buggy" -- and then, of course, you find the comments. By the hundreds.

Here: don't take my word for it.  Try the reviews at CNET.  On their scale of 1-to-10, IE 7 hasn't even gotten a five. What a piece of junk this code is!

I know I'll prolly get a few people who'll tout Mozilla -- and not try to sound too much like Dana Carvey dancing the Superior Dance while they're at it.  But they'll have one thing right:

This browser is from Satan -- and it might even be the other way around!