Computer: AMD Dual Core 3.0GHZ something or other. 2 GB Ram. 7200RPM HD. Windows XP SP2, fully patched. AVG Antivirus. Windows Defender. Pretty clean install, only been running for about six months with very light usage.

Install Time

FF2: 40 seconds.
IE7: 11 minutes.

Successful?

FF2: Yes. Within minutes I had started it up and installed a new theme and a couple extensions.
IE7: No. IE7 told me that the install was “not successful”, but gave me no reasons. It suggested I restart my computer. Again.

Ease of Install

FF2: Opened the binary package. Selected the default options and agreed to the license. It installed with no errors.
IE7: Opened the binary package. Agreed to the license. Took 30 seconds to “validate my computer”. Asked me if I wanted to install a “malicious software removal tool” and the “latest updates”. Took five minutes to download and run those thing. Six minutes after that, the install exited and told me it wasn’t successful.

What I did after installing

FF2: Went to the Mozilla Add-on site, installed a few extensions and a new theme, and wrote this blog post.
IE7: Opened Firefox 2 to look at Microsoft’s suggestions on why the install hadn’t worked, which amounted to, “The gnomes did it. Beware gnomes.” I can’t find any cogent reason why the install failed. I can’t find any way to work around it. I can’t be arsed to continue on with this.

What I would have found if the install had gone right

FF2: Looks the same with a few tweaks under the hood, such as in-line spelling. Seems slightly faster than the last FF release.
IE7: Clone of FF1, except with a confusing new interface (why couldn’t they at least use the “ribbon” concept of Office?), and lots of buttons conveniently hidden around the screen, all of which do various different things, some of which even I don’t understand. No internal spell-checker. No internal add-on mechanism (that I can see). Options are labyrinthine. Oddly, it takes about as much time to open IE7 as it does to open FF2.

Why did I upgrade?

FF2: Because I like Firefox and I heard about the inline spellchecker, which basically sold me on it. Now, if someone would write an extension that could sync dictionaries between computers using nothing but my Gmail account, I’d pay them $100.
IE7: Because Internet Explorer 6 has been the bane of my IT existence for the last three, maybe four years. Nothing could possibly be worse than IE6, so when I heard IE7 had a “data broker” and sandboxed security and whatnot, it wasn’t a matter of whether to install it, but a matter of how quickly could I get it done and hopefully save myself a lot of headaches.

Why did I write this?

Because I am a satisfied Firefox user. Though I suppose if IE7 had actually installed properly, I might have been a satisfied IE7-on-the-side user. I guess we’ll never know.

Tags: firefox, geekery, technology