Microsoft's "original sin" in the development of MS-DOS and Windows was to believe that users were trustworthy both in the sense of accidents and malice. I wrote on this with a 20 year perspective in my blog yesterday -- the problems that Microsoft has now were solved in the 70's by other companies.
Easy solutions:
www.mozilla.org
www.opera.com
Or, if you prefer, clickable:
www.mozilla.org
www.opera.com
Another easy (and enjoyable) alternative:
apple.com and the Safari web browser
Oh, by the way:
You have to have a Mac running OSX to use Safari.
An important detail. But consider the joys of liberation from Windows. I produced a short movie about my switch from Windows to the Mac OS this past summer. Click here to see my movie (warning: if you love Microsoft, you won't enjoy the movie).
Would Netscape's browser be a good choice?
Clayton,
The only problem is that Mac hardware is super expensive compared to Intel based hardware.
John,
Mozilla is basically Netscape's browser. Netscape is Mozilla with some AOL/Netscape branding put on it. And I heard a while back that AOL wasn't to interesting in keeping Netscape up, so Mozilla is probably more advanced. I personally use Opera myself. Gotta love those mouse gestures!
That's right Publius -- because there's only one vendor. I'm surprised their prices are as competitive as they are.
Publius,
The higher cost of Mac hardware is balanced by the high cost of maintaining an operating system that has serious security problems on a weekly basis, as well as time wasted using clumsy software that forces the user to think like a machine. Even Windows XP is cumbersome compared to the Mac OS. Combine this with the cost of troubleshooting driver compatibility issues, and the reduced performance of a machine that is not optimized because of all the different sorts of hardware inside, and you have no savings, and perhaps a loss.
So you can choose your monopoly: the monopoly of Microsoft, which drives down cost but sacrifices ease-of-use and reliability, or the monopoly of Apple, which exists to create a superior product.
In other words, you can support a monopoly that embodies mediocrity, or a monopoly that continually aims toward excellence.
Of course, I don't have any strong feelings about the matter either way... (insert sarcastic tone of voice)
I like Netscape - not IE, plus it has a built in popup stopper in the 7.1 version. I've always preferred it to IE. Don't have too much against Microsoft, but I don't trust it nearly as much, and I vastly prefer Eudora and WordPerfect to the MS equivalents.
I can't make the switch to Macs, though ... I just like the Windows interface!
I've never been a MAC user, but I believe they protect the users from accident and malice much more than Windows.
The Netscape browser is frozen in terms of features and bug fixes. There hasn't been and will likely not be any updates to it. Mozilla is being updated regularly wih new features and bug fixes.
You can always using lynx as well.
The only good platform is a dead platform.
RAM, Romanism and Retrocomputing
Clayton,
I prefer not to serve either monopoly: I use Linux.
You can always using lynx as well.
Not if you want to use Haloscan. 
It's only a matter of time before someone posts a link to Umberto Eco's essay categorizing Mac as Catholic and the "Wintel" platform as protestant.
I never could understand the big deal with all of this. Although, I think that too many of the arguments made against the Wintel platform by the Mac Jihad are outdated (still needling about problems that plagued Windows 95 & 9
.
Is the numeric representation of ninety-five an emoticon?
95
Never mind. I see it now.
Clayton: "In other words, you can support a monopoly that embodies mediocrity, or a monopoly that continually aims toward excellence."
Those are some pretty broad strokes!
Yaka,
No, but 8 next to )is.
How is "emoticon" pronounced?
Publius, I've used linux as well for some web development.
One thing that always drove me nuts about linux was the unsatisfactory font rendering in the browsers. Is that an old dead issue?
I love Opera. It's the best. Elegant and easy.
Nice slogan, though, Ed.
Yaka,
Font rendering in Linux isn't an issue, but good quality free fonts is. This can be solved by installing fonts from Windows in Linux, but that is only legal if you legally own a copy of Windows (I do and I do use their fonts). Microsoft used to make free web fonts available free, but they haven't done so for some years, though they are available on archive.org. Don't know about the legality of using them though. I have no idea whether commercial versions of Linux
I hear you Clayton. Mark Shea, the correct title for your link is "Reason #9281345 to switch to Mac"
Microsoft -stole- MS-DOS and much of the code for Windows. The principle of the former committed suicide due to Microsoft's actions, and in the latter case, undisclosed millions were paid to Apple, from whom the code had been stolen.
Linux is free.So is every application program you will likely need, from OpenOffice to the Gimp. It has gotten very good indeed over the last couple years. Fonts are now rendered correctly.
It is likely that a good deal of Linux code will show up in Longhorn, though MS will likely not reveal it. Using SCO as a stalking horse, -and- buying licenses to UNIX which SCO doesn't own, as well as some reputed features of Longhorn, point to this.
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