Worst Microsoft Products Till Date

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Microsoft has given the world a torrent of products that changed the way we used computers. But with its shimmering success and appreciation comes the line of products and criticism that marks precipitation on Microsoft’s timeline. This article sums up few of the Microsoft products that failed to ingrain computer users.

Windows Me

The old Windows Millennium Edition made people curious at its launch and before people could totally adapt it, Windows 2000 was out and people had no affection to stick to ME. And before people could get comfortable with Windows 2000, market was gushed with Windows XP. Windows ME failed to turn out remarkable. A lot of users criticized ME for being unreliable and unstable. Some also named ME as “Mistake Edition”.

Internet Explorer 6

Internet Explorer 6’s “least secure web browser” tag and slew of other flaws stabbed Microsoft directly in the chest planting a foot towards its downfall.The security glitches grew so high, that in 2004, US advised computer users to switch to any other web browser to avoid thousands of malwares,viruses, Trojans and worms to breach into your computer through IE6. Because of the severe loopholes in the browser, Internet Explorer’s market share dropped from 82% to 49% in a matter of one year.The browser became a huge target for noobhackers. Other than its weaknesses over security, compatibility was another major issue with IE6.

Windows Vista

Windows Vista was launched in 2007 as a successor of Windows XP.The OS was designed keeping the internet generation in mind leveraging ease of media and file share between home computers. But even after its new approach, swishy UI and other widgets, the OS turn out to be a headache. Early users were frequently troubled by problems of not detecting printer, media files and compatibility issues because the OS was not totally equipped with right drivers. People with older computers who made the switch complained about the processor-hungry Vista making their computer sluggish. Vista quivered Microsoft’s reputation of building solid operating systems.

Microsoft Office Assistant

Windows OS and Microsoft Office Suite are most people’s companion at home or work. Therefore, Microsoft decided to aid Office user very seriously. Microsoft Office Assistant, commonly known as Clippy, is a disturbing pop up, that pops whenever you create a new Word document and postulate user as they start typing with a request to help for which millions of users cried NO.Users find it rather an unhelpful interjection. From Windows XP onwards, Microsoft decided to switch this feature off by default.

Zune

Zune was launched in 2006 as an attempt to kill Apple’s “ongoing boom”, the iPod. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out as planned. Zune was completely overshadowed by the 5year veteran iPod within its first week of sale. Despite of its extreme marketing campaign and several improvements with time, still Zune was not able to secure any good grade neither fans nor critics.The device is available only in Canada and US.

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A Quick Guide to Choosing an Internet Browser

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Choosing your Internet browser is an important decision, because it will directly affect your web-surfing experience. Browsers make an impact on how fast websites are downloaded and how you view them on the screen. Your browser keeps your bookmarks for you, and it can store personal data like passwords. Each type of browser has thousands of extensions you can download that offer helpful tools to make your life easier. With broadband internet providing so many options online you want to choose a browser that’s high quality, and everyone will have a different preference depending on their needs. Here are some considerations to help you decide.

Internet Explorer

Windows computers come standard with the Internet Explorer browser, and it is the browser the most people use (often because they do not bother to try or download another). Internet Explorer isn’t the best browser to use, however, because it is prone to catching viruses, and it often runs slowly. There are a lot of customization options to play with, but they are not very intuitive. On the plus side, Internet Explorer does usually work well with Windows. There aren’t as many extensions available as with other browsers, but that is changing as more are developed every day.

Safari

Mac computers come standard with the Safari browser. Most Mac users enjoy the Safari browser, because it works well enough on their computers. Safari is not extremely popular for Windows users, however, because it isn’t as fast or as customizable as others. If you use the Internet for very simple browsing and simple tasks, Safari is a fine choice. If you do a lot on the Internet at once, Safari is often slower than other browsers. There are fewer extensions available for Safari, so it may not be the best choice if you’re looking for a lot of add-ons or extra security features.

Firefox

The Mozilla Firefox browser is increasing in popularity, especially within the web design community. Firefox is also open-source, so there are plenty of extensions, and many add-ons offer extremely helpful tools for web designers and developers. You can customize a lot, and it has the most memory of any browser, meaning it’s very quick and ideal for performing complicated web tasks. Firefox is also very secure, with many security extensions available.

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Chrome

Google’s browser Chrome is very fast and user-friendly. It’s a popular choice, especially for people who use Gmail, Google Docs, and other Google products, because it is easy to integrate everything. It has a very streamlined appearance, and there are many extensions available. Because Google Chrome is open-source, there is a high number of user-generated add-ons to choose from. Google Chrome also gets high marks in security. You generally cannot go wrong with this browser.

All of these broadband internet browsers have fantastic options and many people use multiple browsers for different tasks. Each one has different uses depending on your needs so pick one that's perfect for your most common internet uses. 

Sam Jones, the author, finds broadband incredibly useful but thinks that it could be easier to use many websites and browser features.

How To Make the World Wide Web Safe for Children

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While the World Wide Web may help kids broaden their horizons, it may also snatch away their innocence all along.  As we all know, kids may stumble upon some offensive materials online such as harassment, pornography, violence, and the like. That explains why parents should be responsible in giving their children unlimited internet access.

Good tidings for parents! By all means, you can keep your kids safe from offensive web contents. Learn how you can protect your kids from harmful internet materials without compromising online learning possibilities. And, here are some handy tips on how you can readily do so.

Schedule Internet Use

Since kids aren’t supposed to stay late browsing the internet, scheduled internet browsing shall surely come handy. This shall help them manage their time effectively as much as yours. Of course, you’ll have to keep them under your watch while they are surfing the net.

There are computer applications that allow you to come up with website browsing schedule. As a matter of fact, you can either make a daily or a weekly timetable on which your kids may browse the internet. You may further customize internet browsing calendar by specifying game time and study time.

Simplify Web Operation

Children might be considered as fast learners, but they might not handle the complexity of the World Wide Web. Popular browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, are commonly bombarded with confusing pop-up windows. Unfortunately, this might be too much to handle for kids.

Fair enough, you’ll find some child-friendly browsers that are likely to keep everything simple for your little fellow. This sort of browser readily blocks pop-ups, as well as, right-click menus. That leaves kids with some few large buttons for quick and easy internet browsing activity.

Monitor Website Access

Imagine taking control of your child’s online activities through limited web access. There are many offensive materials lurking around the internet that might negatively influence your child’s behaviour. Kids may imbibe violent acts from online multimedia files. Besides, it’s noteworthy that kids are great imitators, too.

With child-safe browsers, parents may control their kids’ website access. Kids aren’t likely to visit any website without prior permission. Some browsers may also employ age-appropriate interface that automatically suggests child-friendly websites and blocks the rest. As soon as they reach the right age, you may nevertheless allow your child to visit arbitrary sites further subject to content-based filters.

Provide Safe Community

As much as possible, you should make sure that your kid is in good company online. There’s no doubt that kids are prone not only to corruption, but also to fraud in dealing with people they meet on the web. No wonder, they’d be better off joining child-friendly social networking sites with exclusive members.

Most, if not all kiddie browsers are likely to keep your personal files safe, too. That is made possible by preventing instant access to Windows. Without full Windows access, you can keep your kids away from sneaking on your private files thereby inhibiting their tendency to resort to file hacking. A Cell Phone Expert once said that "children need a safe place to play, learn, and grow. 

For your kids to enjoy efficient internet use, you better find the best internet deals from an internet expert.

Author's Bio:

Krystine Joy Sitjar is an author of many blogs that tackles internet safety. She is an advocate of children's rights.

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A Tough Cookie to Crack

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A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, logging in, or a record of which pages were visited by the user even months or years ago.

Although cookies cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer, tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are commonly used as ways to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories — a major privacy concern that has prompted European and US law makers to take action.

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Microsoft launched new website to check credibility of browsers

Bringing another innovation to the world of technologies and gadget, Microsoft launched a website on October 11^th, 2011 that cranks out security scores for the number of editions of Internet Explorer which is its own browser and also other browsers built by the rivals of Microsoft, Google and Mozilla. This new website is named yourbrowsermatters.org and it works by running a browser through a checklist of security features and then gives a score that is out of a maximum of 4 points.

It is not surprising that the highest version of Internet Explorer (IE9) has the highest score of 4 out of 4. The previous version of Internet Explorer, IE8, which was launched in 2009, had garnered a score of 3. Chrome 14 of Google, which is the current stable build, which was launched last month, has settled on a second position by getting a score of 2.5 out of 4. Another browser which is a month old, which is Mozilla's Firefox 7, had generated a score of just 2 out of 4. The other two browsers which come amongst the top five most used and popular browsers, Opera Software's Opera and Apple's Safari didn't even garner any score as they weren't considered to be competitive enough by Microsoft. The message displayed for both of these was "We can’t give you a score for your browser".

According to Microsoft, this new website and its scoring exam have the purpose of illustrating the insecurities of the older browsers. As a result it is quite anticipated that IE6, which is a decade old and which Microsoft has been keen to kill, had scored a 0 out of 4. It also exposed a prevalence of different web based threats that will try and trick users into making poor decisions. Microsoft’s chief IE marketing executive, Roger Capriotti, said that the ranking was based on browsers that provide better protection against the most common threats such as malware which are socially engineered.

Microsoft had publicized the ability of IE8 and IE9 for blocking malware for quite some time with studies done by NSS Labs as examples. According to these studies some of which was paid by Microsoft itself, IE9 had the sustained capacity of blocking 99.2% of all the malicious links and Web-hosted malware that it faced. These results displayed by Microsoft haven’t been commented on by Google and Mozilla yet, although Microsoft has welcomed comments from them.

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