You could certainly buy a "computer" without Windows. Just like you can now --- except now it's easier.

IE could always be uninstalled, you just couldn't do it the "easy" way via Windows "Uninstall Programs".

You could also customize your Windows Install - since 98 all the way through to Win 8.1 and choose NOT to install IE. Although it required some effort and work, and if you so chose to not install IE, it was still recommended that you keep MSHTML among a few other pieces. Otherwise you would wind up with internal renderings that wouldn't work, and would be unable to read help files. Now if you didn't care about those internal renderings, then you could install a standalone help-file reader, CHM-reader. That would also bring quirks and issues, as the reader from sourceforge didn't really work as well.

Making a bunch of bullshit statements doesn't make them true.

10% is almost no one (as far as Chrome Developers are concerned). Tab Mix Plus for FF (with side tabs) has 1,000,000+ users. Tree Style Tab (which is probably the most functional of all the side-tab clones) has only 100,000+ users. Vertical/Side tabs will never be native in Chrome :: too much effort for too few users.

Which is pretty interesting, I bet less than 1% of Chrome's Users have any interest whatsoever in "DevTools/Inspect Element". I wonder when that will get removed from Chrome.

It's better misspelt.

They said "teachers", it sounds more like lazy IT that got bored of resetting passwords, and issued all machines with the given teachers last name as the password.

Am on it (Win 8.1) right now. Aero was ripped from the core files in 8.1 --- in 8.0 there was some remnants of Aero that a member on MSFN.org was able to partially enable, but it came with numerous caveats and bugs due to process injection IIRC.

The point is Win 8/.1 is the least customizable Windows iteration since Win 3.1. And you can't make it look like Windows 7 without hacking core files, which also breaks explorer and various other systems in odd ways.

Because, Apple.

That may be true with a small session, or a minimal number of open tabs. Yet, with a large session|many tabs, FF becomes unresponsive regularly (CPU Spikes) and there's almost nothing you can do to make it release RAM, except for closing the browser. FF's CPU usage also spikes on launch 30-50% on a quad core with a large session, even when only a single tab of a given window is loaded on launch. The CPU usage also spikes whenever you manage tabs (move|close).

Compared to almost any other Browser FF lags badly in terms of resource management, including IE11, and Blink-based browsers (Chrome, Opera, etc). It also doesn't seem to matter what branch of FF you use, they all are horrible at resource management (FF Nightly 32bit or 64, WaterFox/64bit, FF Dev 32bit (previously Aurora).

I really doubt the shrinking user-base has much if anything to do with Australis either, it's pretty easy to add back the Status Bar, Addon Bar, or any number of bars that you want.

Although personally, I wonder why the hell they (Mozilla) don't distribute some of their Devs or money ($120+ Million for FF Development in 2012) to some of the MAJOR Addon authors and help them get on board with Electrolysis (e10s). I imagine FF's user-base will shrink even further before (or if) Mozilla ever sees the light.

McDonalds has a Happy Meal. I think you must be mistaken.

I'll stick with my script, that generates strings based on passphrases :-)
cap liz donna demon self ---> ÍÅÏÜvÉ?#{c?>î/Û'7£Ûó¾n>Vî

Of course, here on slashdot that string will get reamed (6 characters removed), as not only does slashdot not do Unicode or UTF-8, it can't even handle upper-ansi characters properly either.

Logitech's G700s is decent, but I think I prefer the MX518/G400 -- primarily due to the better button layout and buttons that are easier to press in multiple ways - as opposed to G700s' top-body buttons which can only be activated via "claw-holding" or a very specific way to lay your hand so your index finger can depress that button. Which is also due in part to the idiotic placement of the fly-wheel-scroll-release button --- as opposed to it being depressed (instead of raised) or moved to just below the scroll wheel --- where it wouldn't intefere with the (only) top-body button.

The rest of the buttons, even the side thumb ones have far too much resistance and "sharp-angles". Many of the G700s issues can be "gotten used to", and you might not even notice most of the problems if you never owned the MX518.

I don't see any superiority in FF at all, beyond allowing customization. It's memory utilization is absolutely insane: 300MB just to open an empty browser --- although interestingly that memory utilization doesn't increase as you open tabs (initially) - so it looks like it requests more memory than it needs, except it doesn't freaking release the memory. Period. Full stop. Close windows, close tabs, does NOT matter. You have to close the whole damn browser.

Firefox is my primary browser. It doesn't hold a candle to Opera 12.17, but FF is pretty much the only (current) browser going for power-users... at least until we see more of what Vivaldi has up their sleeve.

You mean like how Bing and Yahoo (powered by Bing, but not the same results) promote their own "versions" of things ahead of other search results?

Search for CSS/HTML via Yahoo (the default in FF now) - you will get a slew of "MDN" (mozilla developer network) results, top-listed. Or how Bing promotes Bing Videos|Images instead of Google's?

We're pretty much talking about Google top-listing ONE of their "own" results. That hardly affects any business, nor is it a credibility hit. Their own service/info is still relevant to the search at hand.

I think we'd all be happier if Google would just stop ignoring our search terms.

Un-bee-leeev-able. Firefox is so stable, and memory efficient.

Oh wait...