General Chat

Well . I did it. Just hope all goes well.......and that I did it right....

Thank you all for your help & advice.

Its a Desktop Rollo.. A..B..& C will have to wait til grandaughter
visits as they mean nothing to me & having got this far .. would not want to mess things up... Just proud & amazed I managed so far..

. Thank you

You will find that Firefox can import yr bookmarks etc just fine from IE. Set Firefox as default browser but DO NOT try and remove IE.

In order to get the best out of XP

(a) make sure that ClearType is enabled - for some reason a lot of XP machines do not have it running. Makes a big difference to font appearance and clarity in all applications inc browser. It is free, part of the OS. Windows versions after XP ClearType runs automatically.

(b) ensure that the installed memory is at least 1 Gb. If you have a laptop the options will be for 1 or 2 modules of 512Mb desktops may have 2 or 4 slots. Memory is very cheap. Many home machines were bought with only 512Mb memory or even less and have never been upgraded.

(c) disable Microsoft local search indexing - it is a real performance killer.

If you have a bigger screen then the taskbar and desktop icons can be set to "large" and a larger font specified. I ahve met a lot of XP users who say they cannot use a bigger screen 'cos it is "not supported" and the icons etc are too small. Duh. Any laptop will support an external monitor plugged into the VGA port. This can be a good way to use the main screen for apps and run movies etc on the 2nd screen.

good luck

Margaret in Sussex - make sure you download Firefox from official Mozilla site as some sites will dump malware and other unwanted stuff on your computer ;-)

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/

Thank you Shirley & Rollo for your input....... I was leaning towards Firefox & as it is close to IE8 sounds like the better option......

Keep your fingers crossed for me that I don't mess this up....... so much info on here although most is on a memory stick too....

Do wish they would stop trying to fix things that ain't broke.

Thank you again Margaret

Chrome will spy on you none stop. It is also a lot different to IE8. OTOH it is fast on an old machine and has an official add-in which lets you run android apps in the browser.

Firefox is much closer to IE8 if you don't like learning new tricks and does not spy on you. It also has free addons "AdBlock" and "NoScript" which will keep most unwanted stuff at arm's length. It is nearly as fast as Chrome.

Both are free.

Make sure you have up to date AV and firewall software ( the old Microsoft stuff is no longer available for XP) and with an up2date browser you can expect at least another year out of XP. Avast! is a good free option.

I have XP too and found ages ago I was having big problems with Internet explorer so changed over to Google Chrome

It did give access to my favourites already saved and was quite easy to get used too

It went along OK for ages but just lately darn thing crashes over and over and I find eventually a reboot has to done to clear it . Plus I find it sticks and won't open webpages although I click on the shortcut .

The only thing again then is to reboot .

Not feeling very happy now with google chrome but resisting changing yet again to another browser

Need to change/update browser...

I have windows XP.... More & more I find that sites do not support
internet explorer 8 which apparently the highest I can use with XP.

So my question is ( well 2 really) Would firefox be a suitable option & does a different browser alter the way the computer works...??

Takes me ages to get used to change........have had a laptop for 3 years & still not aux fait with it.

Thank you