Fight the power

Every so often there's a torrent of horrendous press about some piece of Microsoft software, and in the wake I often try out some highly touted alternative.

At first I like the alternative, and especially I like the way using alternative software makes me feel: smug and vaguely transgressive. Then I notice the alternative software has problems. Then I notice it's terrible. Then I switch back to the Microsoft product. This cycle usually runs its course in a day or less.

The alternative I most recently tried and rejected is Mozilla's Firefox browser. An alternative browser seems like a great idea, mostly because hackers and crackers and virus writers and cyber-ne'er-do-wells love to target Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I was especially nervous about recent reports of malicious code that steals your login information when you use Internet Explorer to access certain banking web sites.

At first I thought Firefox was great. Then I noticed it wasn't handling Adobe Acrobat files very well. Then I noticed that Java didn't work at all, so I installed Sun's Java package, which seems buggy (perhaps because my computer has an off-brand processor). Finally I was disturbed by the way Firefox randomly scrolls around in certain documents, especially the main page of washingtonpost.com.

In the end I decided the alternative wasn't worth the trouble, even if using the Microsoft product means worrying about online banditry. I switched back to Internet Explorer.

Other alternative products I've tried include Sun's clunky StarOffice word processor, a disappointing recent version of Netscape, and the poor consumer version of Linux that came preinstalled on my PC.

Sigh. Monopolies wouldn't be so bad if they gave you better choices.