In article ,
"Steve W." wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"Steve B" wrote:

[snip]


Will downloading Firefox improve my computer life? Do I have to uninstall
IE, and will my computer allow itself to be castrated thusly? Is there a
lot of configuring to do afterward? Do I have to get rid of OE, and
download a new news program, or does the installation of Firefox fix all
that? I am somewhat handy on computers, but not sure about setting the
things behind the curtain.

Advice appreciated on selecting a browser, news reader, and general
computer
setup to make my computing life a little smoother.

You can have any number of browsers, and do not have to uninstall one to
have another. In each browser's preferences, uncheck the box about
checking for or being the default browser, so they won't fight for
dominance.

Firefox works pretty well, and is what I usually use. There is no risk
to trying it. Firefox is not really a newsreader, and so will not
replace Outlook Express, which has many problems.

But there are many newsreaders, so you ought to be able to find one that
you like. The best approach is to try a few of them, as there is not
one best newsreader. While you can have multiple newsreaders, some may
conflict if downloading news simultaneously, so make downloading
manually triggered until you settle on one.

The big thing to look for in newsreaders and email clients is how well
filtering works, so you can automatically ignore most spam and scams,
and bozos.

Joe Gwinn


Thunderbird has a good newsreader in it. BUT the newer versions are
somewhat of a PITA.
You can find the older versions on www.oldversion.com personally I
stopped at version 2 but version 3 isn't hard to alter to be usable.

I tried Thunderbird, but didn't much like it. Merging handling of email
and newsgroups doesn't actually work that well - each has its own
metaphor.

I prefer MT Newswatcher on the Mac, but Newswatcher has been getting a
bit long in the tooth, not having been updated since 2006, and has been
developing some weird little problems. Currently, I'm playing with
Thoth.

Joe Gwinn