Hi malware fighters,
People have various reasons to steer away from "blue-e"= (ready installed & built-in free Internet Explorer browser) and use an alternate browser. Blue-e can hardly be avoided by a lot of people because they think it is the only way to browse or go to the Internet. Furthermore it is ready-installed (See the recent Opera claim -
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/opera_ec_complaint/versus MS. In the old days before Windows bought up a browser and turned it into Internet Explorer in Windows you could get a floppy to manually install Netscape, do you still miss these days of free choice, or did you totally forget about it?). Some cannot leave IE because of some of the features, other just feel it is the superior tool, nothing wrong there. IE is secure but not as it comes out of the box.
The main reason I avoided it as much as I can is a misnomer called ActiveX functionality (you can uninstall it, but again it comes as by default). Just the other day a lot of HP laptops are found to have ready installed HP software that enables remote code execution through a vulnerable ActiveX dll.
Yep, again an ActiveX hole!. With Firefox, Flock or Opera you are/were not vulnerable. This and because IE has no alternative for my dear NoScript and ABP extensions are reasons for me to only use IE7 to install my Microsoft updates, or sites where the standards are bended to support IE. The Windows-K version where you could have Windows without an IE or Media Player install has not been such a success as some like to see. It comes free and it is already installed, so why not use it? The user is like the little duckling what he or she clicks first, it will click for the rest of his or her days, like a duckling following all that poses as its mother.
No my question to you - What were your reasons to use another browser than IE for your surfing, webmailing, etc.?
polonus