If you care, here are my totally amateur opinions of some of the latest software I've been using... and tips on a few programs that I think every PC owner should have.

Microsoft has a new version of Internet Explorer available as a free download in beta form. Internet Explorer 7.0 seems to be Microsoft's attempt to recapture the browser market, which they've more or less lost to Firefox. Microsoft knows that they've dropped the ball, and the splash screen at the website is something of a caveat:

I love that wording. It might as well say "OK, fine! We admit it! Our browser sucks! We'll try to do better, we promise!"

So what does IE7 have to offer? Well, as far as the security issues go, I'll have to take Microsoft at it's word. I know my way around Windows exactly enough to do the stuff I want to do. As far as trying to test IE for security bugs and faults, I'm in no position to offer a critique. I only know if my computer's security has been compromised after the fact. But, since I use a router and firewalls on both of our PCs, I've never had a problem.

Of course, part of the reason I've never had a problem is that I browse with Firefox.

So security issues leave me out of my depth... but I can offer my opinion on whether or not IE7 is any "easier." The question is, is Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 a better browsing experience? The answer is, eehh.

Oh, it's better in some ways than IE6.0 and all of it's updates were. Finally, Internet Explorer has woken up to the whole tab browsing phenomenon. Now, for the first time with a Microsoft browser, you can surf the net with tabs. And, I have to admit, the interface looks kinda slick:

Looks good, right? In fact, it looks a lot like Firefox.

Yes, the tab interface is clean and easy to use. Click the small tab to the right of your taps to open a new, blank tab. Did you notice the two small tabs to the left? One opens a dropdown menu of all the tabs you have open. The other one, the one with the little boxes, opens a full-screen menu that shows you a thumbnail of ALL of those tabs at once:

OK, I admit, that's pretty cool. If you're like me and you often have fifteen news stories open at once, it is neat to be able to jump quickly to the one you're trying to pull a quote from instead of looking for it by flipping through all your tabs. It saves clicks and might save, oh, I dunno... 20 seconds? So I guess that feature is kinda neat.

And that, really, is the only element of IE7 that I would like to see Firefox eventually cop for itself. The other changes to the browser are either bad or unimportant.

For instance, one way that IE7 makes your browsing better is by making the browser more "streamlined" and less "cluttered." And basically, what that means is that before, you might have had to dig through a bunch of menus to find the option that lets you do what you want to do. Now you have to go up to the tools button and first load those menus before you can dig through them:

Tell me again how your making my browsing experience easier, Microsoft?

And here is my biggest complaint; the one that just leaves me with smoke coming out of my ears: Since I've been using Firefox, the only reason I ever even open IE anymore is for FTP, so I can upload graphics and stuff to our server space. And, I admit, IE's FTP interface is clean and easy. Just like Widows; drag it, drop it, no fuss, no muss.

So what's my complaint? Well, with the new version of IE, you can't do FTP anymore! Try to go to your password protected FTP space and you'll get THIS message:

I dug around at the discussion boards for IE at the Microsoft website and found out that there IS a way to kinda make IE7 work with FTP... and what I learned is that making it work is such a big pain in the butt that, for me, using IE7 is much worse than using IE6.

Now, granted, this browser is still in beta, and this bug might be fixed eventually... but given Microsoft's history with browser issues, I don't see me switching from Firefox anytime soon.

Regarding Firefox itself, my only complaint with it has been that you can't do FTP with it. Firefox is a nice little browser and I can't imagine going back to surfing without it, but it's lack of FTP interface has been a major annoyance.

The latest version of Firefox can access FTP sites, and when I access my server through FTP, I get the classic index-style view. Nice for checking file names and doing a quick inventory of files... but most of the time, if I access my server space with FTP, it's because I need to upload something. Usually just small graphics for the blog, but that's uploading nonetheless.

So I'd been forced to resort to IE for FTP and wait for a plug-in that allowed FTP access with Firefox.

Well, I'm happy to say that such a plug-in now exists.

FireFTP for Firefox is a neat little plug-in that.... well, it lets you do FTP with Firefox, doesn't it? I guess that's obvious.

The interface is a bit clunky, but it opens a split-screen browser window within Firefox that serves my purposes. On the left is a window that let's me browse my hard drive, on the right is a window that shows me my space on the server:

Now, what I always liked about FTP with Internet Explorer was that it let me treat the server like just another folder, and you can't quite do that with FireFTP. You can, however, drag the separator that splits the two windows all the way to the left so that you're only seeing the server window... and you can drag and drop things out of folders and onto the server that way. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

All in all, though, I guess the easiest way to FTP with Windows XP at this point is to do it through My Network Places. Just create a new Network Place as a shortcut to your server space and treat it like any other folder. Of course, that is only going to really be safe with a totally secure PC. At home or in your office, fine... but at the library, for instance, is another matter.

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Now for quick links to two pieces of freeware that I don't think anyone should be without:

One is Irfanview, the image viewing/changing/manipulating software that I've used for years. Irfanview lets you do a lot of things with your images that few freeware programs allow. It can open pretty much any image format out there, and it has a great interface for creating thumbnails and HTML pages with your images. It's great. I've been using it since the '90's and I can't believe it's still free. If you're not using it, check it out.

The second is DVDShrink. It's quick and simple, and lets you make backup copies of your DVDs with little to no trouble. Plus, it gets around encryption and copy-proofing issues and allows you to make "region free" copies of your stuff. You have to actually burn the DVDs with your own burning software, but DVDShrink lets you create compact, compressed files that will fit on a DVD-R... and as far as my eye can tell, the compressed video still looks as good as the original copy.