Windows 7 is the best choice for buying a computer,whether it is your first computer,laptop,netbook or a new one. First of all Windows 7 is very user friendly and easy to use and you can personalize it in many ways. But the one thing you will want to do is find a good web browser. By default Windows 7 comes with Internet Explorer 8 or 9 for newer computers. But IE is very slow and crashes a lot even on the best network connections and not very customizable.Firefox is a good alternative browser to the horrible IE but the latest versions of Firefox have become slow. This is because Firefox although it is made compatible for Windows it is also made to be compatible for all systems.Mac,Lynax etc. The ealirer versions of Firefox 3.53 worked fine but now Mozilla have upgraded their browser to 3.610 it is now outdated and Firefox seems to be upgraded every month or two.But there are open source versions of Firefox that are made ONLY for Windows computers and these can be used on Windows Vista,Windows XP and Windows 7 and also other versions of Windows.One is Pale Moon web browser that is a Firefox open source but all the Firefox add ons work with this browser and it IS actually faster than Firefox but it can only be used on a Windows computer.As Pale Moon is made only for Windows but it is updated nearly as much as Firefox is. The latest version is Pale Moon 3.69.Pale Moon does not come in a beta version and I don't mind Mozilla Firefox but I dislike both Firefox and Flock beta because they are both bland and clones of Google Chrome browser. And as I already have both Chromium and Google Chrome Canary which is the open source shell of Chromium,I do not need Firefox beta. Chromium is a very fast browser as is Google chrome but some sites work better in Mozilla Firefox or Flock,so I still need these type of browsers.And I find that Pale Moon does work faster and better than Firefox which some times crashes.And in the future Mozilla may decide to discontinue both Mozilla Flock and Firefox and replace these with the beta versions. Which means I and other people who do not want beta will have to look for alternatives. But Pale Moon is the perfect alternative and also another browser that is not well known is Safefox,another Firefox open source.This takes on an earlier version of Firefox 3.52 but it is fully supported on all web sites. The only problem I had was finding a download link as the Safefox website re directs you to the Firefox website. But I got my Safefox browser from the C Net website that has a direct download link and may I add that that site has many web browsers listed for Windows users with direct and safe downloads from their site. I use C Net all the time to get new software for my laptop. Safefox has a password safe bank,so that when you log into your email or website,you can tap your password in on a keypad in the browser instead of the web page. So very useful if you are using a shared computer but you do not have to use this facility but it is there if you want it. Safefox like Pale Moon works with all of the Firefox add ons. And both Safefox and Pale Moon can be used alongside your existing Firefox browser or instead of Firefox. Also both these browser are made just for Windows so they are faster and more secure for browsing. So if you have not tried Pale Moon and Safefox yet you should. I have uninstalled my Firefox browser and am now using both Pale Moon and Safefox and I don't have any plans to go back.
Andrea Borman