Jeff wrote:

Well Jeff, my first computer experience was on a DEC PDP-11, followed by an IBM 360/65. On teletype, punch cards, punch tape, and at the end CRT terminals and Tektronix graphing terminals.

Yes, I'm old...😉

Me too, but still too "young" for my Old Age Supplement. 🙂

mf22433 wrote:

Instead of focussing on the browser you should really focus on the version of your operating system. Microsoft decided to stop supporting XP and they were right. XP was released in 2003 (12 years ago), in the computer world this is almost middle age. XP is really unsecure and without any more security patches it is a dream for hackers. Running a recent version of Firefox on XP will certainly not make your system secure.

You should really consider upgrading to either Win7 or Win8 and both will offer you Internet Explorer 11 and if you prefer you can still run the latest versions of Firefox or Google Chrome, this will be much better than keeping XP. Btw moving up to either 7 or 8 will give you a free upgrade to Win10 when it becomes available.

BTW I am not working for MS, but I am one of their customer, managing the IT environment of an enterprise with about 10000 workstations, migrated last year from XP to 7 :-)

Excellent advice.

My “new” computer, the one I am bearvering away upon right now is a 2009 HP and it runs Windows 7.

The “old” computer is a 2007 HP that was checked out by Staples Tech Service and found beyond repair in 2010. Failing motherboard was listed as the culprit. However it still functions well and is used only as a back-up for the main computer.

Although Microsoft no longer supports XP, I do have Norton 360 on both computers and as the old computer is turned off 95% of the time, it probably is a poor target for hackers. Possible to be sure, but unlikely.

I don’t know that I could still find Windows 7 OS these days and I am not at all sure that a computer that old can handle Windows 8, which I don’t like the look of from the reviews.

As an 8 year old computer supposedly barely cheating death, I don’t feel that it is worth the expense of buying a new OS for.  

Lastly, all important files are routinely copied to an external hard drive which I use to transfer files from one computer to the other.

Yes, I know I could network them, but feel this is safer, if more work.

Jeff

FWIW, for those who don't like the look of the Win8/8.1 metro interface, there is a little free utility called "classic shell" that will bring back your Win7 start menu and usual desktop and hide the modern interface : http://www.classicshell.net/

That's what I am using on my private PC's.

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

OK I installed Firefox and indeed the speed is MUCH better.

However, Firefox displays no videos and the top photos on CNN appear briefly then turns to gibberish. [XsjYTT&44qFjbc_+]

How do I get Firefox to display videos and then, just possibly convert the noise into a photo?

Thanks,

Jeff

P.S. From what I have heard, I probably will change both computers to Windows 10 when it comes out. My HP with XP came with Vista, so I assume it can handle Windows 10. The Newer HP with Windows 7 should be a walk in the park....