[WEB4LIB] Problems with IE5

[Bill Manson]

Bill Drew wrote:

> The last two weeks I have been having increasing problems with my laptop.
> At first I thought it was the computer games my son had installed on it.
> Finally when using IE5 it would keep on freezing up when loading sites
that
> used lots of graphics or when my son was playing games via MSN Gaming
Zone.
> I contacted our help desk and got properly dressed down for installing
IE5.
> Well after finally getting IE5 uninstalled and reinstalling IE4 all of the
> problems disappeared.  Our help desk manager told me that she has seen
many
> problems with IE5 that are not being acknowledged by Micro$oft.  Our
campus
> will not be adopting IE5 for many more months yet because of these
problems.
> I am now properly chastened and have mended my ways (for now).  DON'T USE
> IE5 YET!!!

I have been using IE5 with mixed results.  Some weeks ago I asked about
problems connecting to a few sites (notably AltaVista) using it.  I had the
difficulties on two different machines in two wholly different environments.
Finally in desperation, I used the free support bulletin board at the
Microsoft site.  Not only have they been responsive, but they have phoned me
twice to see how things are going.  They may not be acknowledging the
problems in public, but they're sure behaving in an un-MS way to fix them!

BTW, one of the computers had an unrelated (?) problem with its registry
that meant I had to restore from an old backup of the registry...viola! No
more problems getting into the sites!  The MS response was essentially
'That's very nice, but we have no idea why that should have fixed it.  Let's
keep exploring the problem on your other machine.'   So the saga continues,
and the problem has been escalated.  At this point I've got lots of good
thing to say about MS support.

Bill Manson
Executive Director, Merrimack Valley Library Consortium
Andover, MA
Phone:  978 475 7115
Fax:  978 475  7179

"Being a Red Sox fan means subscribing to a set of preposterous cultish
beliefs for which no successful deprogramming has been devised."--Martin F.
Nolan