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Resolved Question

IE *

Sep 7, 2011 3:14AM PDT

I am currently running W XP Home edition windows 5.1 with Service Pack 3 installed. Should I upgrade to IE 8 or leave well enough alone (I have not upgraded IE at all since initial installation back in 2005 but have kept current with all updates from MSN)??

Comments or suggestions would be appreciated!!!!

Discussion is locked

bbrose2 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Absolutely
Sep 7, 2011 10:44AM PDT

Absolutely. Especially if you're making the rather foolish mistake of using IE as your primary browser, you should ALWAYS be running the latest version for your OS. IE6, which is what came with XP, was such a rotten POS, it was absolutely riddled with security flaws. Literally, for a couple of YEARS there was at least one total system compromise level exploit found every week.

There's also the fact that many sites are dropping support for anything less than IE7, or even IE8 in some cases.

But for the sake of avoiding malware and other nasties, you really should consider replacing IE with any of the following: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. All of them are free, all of them probably have near feature parity with IE, if not going well above and beyond, and none of them have the same security concerns IE does. Try all four, keep whichever one you like best.

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IE 8 installed
Sep 8, 2011 9:25AM PDT

THANK YOU one & all for your comments & suggestions !! I did update to IE 8 with no problems after following your suggestions. Now to learn the differences & see how it performs.

Thanks again.

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Answer
Since I don't use IE I updated it.
Sep 7, 2011 3:33AM PDT

It's mainly for Windows Update and such that I did that plus to field questions such as does it work and does it work with this web site.
Bob

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IE 8
Sep 7, 2011 7:55AM PDT

I am a little confused on your response. Are you saying that you do not use IE 8 and only use Windows XP & receive all of the updates for both?? Why don't you use IE 8 & what do you use?

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Answer
We Updated To IE8 On ALL Our XP's
Sep 7, 2011 6:00AM PDT

It's a little more secure than the previous versions and will allow updates to continue for Internet Explorer and the operating system.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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Answer
IE 8
Sep 7, 2011 7:58AM PDT

Any problems with IE 8 during installation or after that should discourge me from installing IE 8??

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No Problems Here...Although I Use This Method
Sep 7, 2011 8:27AM PDT

Because I installed IE8 on about 35 or 40 separate computers, I did it using the full "offline" installer from the link below.. I downloaded the file and installed it using the downloaded file. (In my case, I copied the file to a flash drive and transferred it from one computer to the next, using the file to install from.)

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=43

Before installing IE8, I made sure the computer was free from spyware by running a couple of scans, I cleaned out the Temporary Internet Files Folder, plus the C:\Documents and Settings\Yourusername\Local Settings\Temp folder, then I temporarily disabled the antivirus program on the computer. Once that was done, running the installer file from the link above worked fine.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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Incompatibility with Filezilla
Sep 10, 2011 12:18AM PDT

Several months ago, I accidentally updated to IE8 and had to return to IE7. I maintain a website using basic html coding that requires a Right-Click to View Source. In IE8 the code is reformatted so that it doesn't match my html file. It would mean a huge change for me.

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The Use A Different Browser For HTML Coding
Sep 12, 2011 10:15AM PDT

I keep the newest Internet Explorer version on the computer for security when I need to use it.. But I don't need to use it much. Generally, I only use IE when I visit the Windows Updates site. I use a different browser such as Firefox, Opera, etc as my primary browser.

Hope this helps.

Grif