I am not going to make a habit of this but today I am going to "review" something.

Before you get bored and click away somewhere else I am only doing this because its free and secondly because Bill Gates is giving it  away. I love free anything, and if you look hard enough there is plenty to be found on the net  (I'm one of those hoarder types see my last post, the chairs did eventually make it to the tip but I ended up removing the castors from them when I got there. I've added them to the castors box in the shed...).

Anyway if you haven't guessed by now the product under my woefully inadequate gaze is Internet Explorer 7.

So here goes:-

As mentioned above it is a free download from Microsoft, Just under 12MB so no problem if you have a flashy broadband connection. Installation was a pretty painless affair although it does require you to "validate" your copy of Windows online so if you bought your computer from Paddy's PC Repairs or a chap in the pub you may stumble slightly at this point. I guess I should add that it requires you to be running XP with service pack 2, again this will be unlikely if you procured your pc from a dubious source.

I installed it on my "main machine" as I call it, the one that acts as my server downstairs mainly to see if it caused any adverse effects to the home network or the AOL browser. To my surprise no complaints have been heard from the AOL software (yet) and the network seems to function as before. So far so good.

Now then negative points. The immediate difference I noticed was a very subtle change in font which I can't seem to find the settings for, you can change text sizes fonts etc. but no matter what I do I can't make it look exactly as it did before. The other thing is the Phishing filter. This is supposed to warn you about entering your passwords, bank account details and the like on websites set up to look like genuine internet banking sites but are actually just there to nick your information. This is a good idea in theory, unfortunately it checks with a database at microsoft before it opens any page so this can slow things down considerably. My advice? Turn it off and then turn it back on only when you need to enter a password somewhere.

Plus points, well plenty I suppose. Tabbed browsing I can see the benefits of if only for the feature that allows you to close the browser and reopen it with the tabs still open in effect this means you can have more than one home page. The top of the window looks much less cluttered and as such more is visable on your screen. The kids particularly liked the zoom feature and after a night out on the pop focusing on the screen could be vastly easier when you feel the need to check your blog comments. It is supposed to be more secure as well but only time will tell that. Clearing cookies, history and temp files is performed with just one click, again useful if you are inebriated or just plain lazy and I have to admit it seems very "user friendly".

So a cautious thumbs up from me for the moment,  download it and try it for yourself if only because its free.

So thats it. Sorry if I bored anyone, normal service will be resumed shortly.