> Why do people use Internet Explorer or Outlook?

I don't use Outhouse except at work, where it's required. I really *like* Outlook in combination with Exchange 2000, but just the fact that there are seventeen kabillion viruses for the Exchange/Outlook combo alone would make me never want to have to administer such a setup. But as a user, I think it just rocks. But to me if you're not running Exchange, there's no reason to run Outlook. It's the integrated calendering and task management stuff that is really the reason to use Outlook in a work environment.

As for IE, here's my story. I try *not* to use IE. But what always ends up happening is I use Mozilla/Nutscrape/What-have-you for awhile, and suddenly out of the blue it decides to start crashing a lot. And by a lot, I mean "Every single time I start up the freaking program". Only a reboot solves this problem. So I switch to IE until I reboot. Eventually, it happens again, so I switch to IE. After this happens enough times, I just say screw it and *start* with IE, since that's where I'm going to end up anyway. This has happened with Nutscrape 6, 6.1, Mozilla 1.0b and 1.0. It has also happened on both Win 98 and XP. I have no idea what causes this, but it pisses me off sufficiently to have kept me basically an IE user for the past few years. Frankly, I don't care what you say, Netscape hasn't been any good since the 3.x days. 4.x was abysmal, and 6.x, while leaps and bounds better than the 4.x incarnations, still isn't as stable as IE on my system.

As for Office, if you know where to look Office XP Pro is free for the downloading, too. ;-) I've never used Open Office, but the product it's based on, StarOffice from Sun, is a total piece of crap. I've used it on Solaris, Linux, and Windows, and it was just a big piece of steaming turd. What's the deal with it opening every single window in this one big master window? That's freaking ANNOYING. Also, the fonts were totally horrid on Linux and Solaris, and the UI in the mail program was so awful I literally had to stumble upon the "send mail" button when trying to compose a message. Gah. If that's your idea of "coming along" I'd hate to see "not quite there yet."

-- Dave