Be afraid, be very afraid of Firefox 3.0, that is if you value Internet Speed. I've used Firefox exclusively for the past 4 years or so and I've always been impressed by Firefox and the people behind it. For me, Firefox always ran faster then Internet Explorer and I loved its basic features. The thing is though, sometimes people with good intentions do stupid things and sometimes people with non-altruistic intentions do very good reliable things. I always said, if the Mafia ran the United States, we'd be better off!
My beef with Firefox 3.0 is a huge one and I don't understand why they didn't think this was a major problem before unleashing this new version to an unsuspecting public. Specifically, It's way too slow because as of June 17, 2008, Google Web Accelerator and Fasterfox are not compatible with Firefox 3.0. I'm guessing they eventually will be but there is no excuse for putting this out in the market like this, albeit its free. Before I go on I should mention that my computer is an excellent Toshiba Tecra A8 Core 2 Duo, 4MB RAM, XP, 80 GB laptop with Broadband Cable Connection. My internet speed with Firefox 3.0, was between 800 and 1750 downloading as opposed to my usual speeds of 3,500- 12,000 downloading with Firefox 2 when I'm actually on Fasterfox with Google Web Accelerator. After about an hour of frustration, I just thought, oh well, I'll use System Restore and go back to the way it was before in 15 minutes or less. Wrong!
It took me about 3 hours to fix the damage and even now I'm not sure its totally fixed. To begin with, when I used System Restore, Firefox 2 would no longer work. I then restored my original settings where Firefox 3.0 was. I had to use Internet Explorer and I had trouble even finding a download for the old Firefox as I think the Download Site had too many people on it and I kept having problems. So to make a long story short, I manually uninstalled Firefox off my computer, then using Internet Explorer I finally managed to download Firefox 2, I had to reinstall the Google Toolbar and for whatever reason had to also reinstall the Google Web Accelerator and Fasterfox. I then had to use various registry software to get my computer back to snuff. The result is, with Firefox 2 via Fasterfox and Google Web Accelerator, my speed is now about 4500 on the download but maybe its that low because its around lunchtime. In any case. that's a lot better then 800-1750 with Firefox 3.
So my recommendation to you is, despite the really great features on Firefox 3.0, if internet speed is important to you and you rely on Google Web Accelerator and Fasterfox to make things faster, don't install Firefox 3.0 until its compatible with Web Accelerator and Fasterfox. I'll delete or revise this article when that happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment