For years, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been bundled with the Windows operating system. Microsoft chose to take what was arguably a “public” application, the web browser, and embed it deeply within operating system, to the extent that it remains difficult, if not impossible to separate out Internet Explorer from Windows. Over the past five years or so, IE was used as the default web browser until it owned the market, with an over-90% share, and in the process, defeating the then-popular NetScape. However, Microsoft Explorer was last updated about three years ago, and in the interim, it has become the target for malicious programs that are automatically downloaded to your computer.

For that reason alone, FireFox, the latest version of Netscape, is of interest. If you surf the web with FireFox, instead of IE, you are automatically protected from a host of malicious spyware programs and pop-up advertising. The icing on the cake, is that FireFox also provides an enhanced browsing experience…with snappy performance, and an improved interface. FireFox also works on Macintosh and Linux computers.

You can download and install FoxFire on to your machine, and run it separately from IE.