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Microsoft Urges Users to Uninstall Netscape 8 (as if that were surprising)
by Dave Murphy

Microsoft Corp. is urging Windows XP users to uninstall the new Netscape 8 webbrowser because it can conflict with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is claiming that the problem is with Netscape, rather than their own browser that invades the operating system like kudzu.

The problem may only affect a very small number of users, and it is limited to displaying RSS (real simple syndication) data, not general-purpose webpages. The folk at America Online, Netscape's owner reported today that a patch will be released next week.

Dave's Opinion
The potential conflict doesn't affect security, and I'm not surprised that Microsoft will do a bit of the crying wolf in order to create negative publicity for any competing product.

I suggest that users don't play into Microsoft's consternation and instead move straight to Mozilla Firefox, a stable, fast webbrowser with hundreds of optional extensions that allow users to customize the browser's functionality.

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References
Netscape
Mozilla Firefox
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05.27.05 @ 03:49 PM ET
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