I use IE all the time and in fact its about all I use to surf the web, do I get any viruses, no I dont. But I use other security software besides that built into IE. McAfee, Zone Alarm Pro, Malwarebytes, and Prevx CSI I have to protect me and I have no idea when the last time I had a virus was or any malicious program. The few times something has appared(possibly an average of no more then 1 per month) have all been successfully blocked. Hmm upon thinking about it, I also used a toolbar that would tell me if somewhere was safe or not but stopped using because it was a little over zealous. McAfee for viruses, Zone Alarm for firewall, Malwarebytes for malware, and Prevx for rootkits etc. A combo of these helps block spyware etc, although I forget which does the work specifically(I think mabe zone alarm). I did get a nasty rootkit once, thats when I got prevx, took care of it, havent had one since.
Do you get viruses you know about? Maybe not. Do you get viruses you don't know about? Those are the ones you have to worry about.
And your arguements just reinforces my point about IE (thank you). You have to run IE... And McAfee...
And ZoneAlarm (Pro)...
And MalwareBytes...
And Prevx CSI.
Wouldn't it be easier just to run NoScript and AdBlock Plus, within Firefox? Wouldn't it be faster?
Also, the cost of running 4 AV apps, at least 2 of which I think have subscriptions of some sort, versus the cost of running two Firefox plugins. Don't try that in your calculator, it'll give you a syntax error.
Now, I'm not saying don't use AV. I use Comodo or AVG (depends on the day and which has been virus-vaulting my files the most recently) and ZoneAlarm or a decent DMZ system, but one of two free, light-weight AV programs and a couple free, light-weight FF plugins gives me equivalent or better protection than what you've paid your soul for (in speed and cash).
The only unfortunate side effect is that it takes longer to start my computer and McAfee uses some resources(not much). Used to start in 30 seconds flat, now takes about 1.5-2 minutes.
That's a factor of... 3-4x? Let's see, going by that, and a rough starting time of 1-2 minutes (from power button to login completed and all services/background apps initialized), which isn't too ridiculously slow for a well-used system, we're looking at up to 8 minutes just to start the seventeen layers of antivirus you have to run because you don't have a decent browser. Personally, the
2 minutes it would take to download and install Firefox (the vast majority taken up by typing firefox into the address bar) seems like a darn good tradeoff. IMO.
Not even to mention the drastic decrease in crashes between IE and FF.
Even if you want to claim IE is more secure, FF is still faster and has more features (the fact they could combine those proves it's superior).
To clarify, higher security may not mean safer, IE may be targeted more often by attacks than the other browsers, and therefore appear to have lower security, but appearances are decieving, IE does indeed block a higher % of attacks against it than any other browser and therefore has the BEST security though it may only be out of necessity.
(I still disagree with IE having better security, even just from my few times toying with both from that perspective, but for the sake of arguement)
IE versus FF is like living behind steel plating in the inner city instead of having a nice sunroom in the country.
Why take a route that is more secure, but out of necessity? Why not avoid the attacks altogether?
I am fairly sure Lynx would do far better than IE.
Web 0.1 FTW.
» Fri May 27, 2011 11:13 am 
