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July 24th, 2000

The IE Virus

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with MS. I think that Windows is better than Mac OS in some ways (I don’t want to start a holy war here), but I also know that they’re a monopoly. Throwing that entirely out the window, I bought Microsoft Money this weekend because, well, I hate Quicken.

Money’s second dialogue box told me that the version of IE I had on the system was "old" and needed to be upgraded. I’ve been running the 128-bit code strength version of 5.01 for months. I tried to cancel IE installation, but couldn’t. Tried it again, couldn’t.So I bit the bullet and agreed. Restarted the machine after the installation and here’s what was installed:

Microsoft Money
Internet Explorer 5.00
Outlook Express
NetMeeting
Microsoft Chat
Address Book
Media Player

…for a money management program. I promptly chopped out everything but IE5. I lost a few of my history items, but the browser seemed okay. Even better is that the install went ahead and made Outlook Express my default mail program without my permission!

Why does Money install IE? Well, it does connect extensively to your bank’s sites, but there’s an option right in the program to use Netscape/ Opera/ whatever.

This type of tactic just disgusts me. -pm

Posted in Technology

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