[Vision2020] Computer question

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Wednesday 26 January 2011 16:03:24 Carl Westberg wrote:
> Being on a tight budget, I replaced my old computer with an Acer One D255
> netbook, which really has all that I personally need in a computer.  It's
> a great little machine, but it came equipped with Internet Explorer, which
> I hate, or to put more civilly, dislike with extreme prejudice.  Specs are
> Intel Atom processor, 1.5Ghz, 1 MB L2 cache; Memory, 1 GB DDR3 memory;
> Storage, 250 GB HDD.  (I have no idea what I just typed).  Would I be able
> to download Mozilla Firefox on this little guy and dump @&*! Internet
> Explorer?

Yes, you should be able to add Firefox to your netbook, and at least just 
choose not to use Internet Explorer. Whether Microsoft's browser can be 
removed without negatively affecting other Windows activities is a little 
controversial. Microsoft has resisted allowing customers to remove IE, but 
some courts have ordered Microsoft to make it removable. I suspect it is 
removable, but it may take some research and careful tech support to do it.

At least you can install and use Firefox, and ignore Internet Explorer.

By the way, the Atom processor is just an Intel Corporation nameplate, or 
brand name, for a processor designed to do several, usually separate, 
processes inside a mobile computer, and to use less battery power in the 
process of doing its jobs. The 1.5 GHz refers to the maximum frequency of the 
computational cycle being one and a half billion cycles per second. The 
netbook may idle along at slower speeds, but when there is a lot to do, its 
top speed is 1.5 gigahertz.

The next three items refer to types of data storage that have different 
retrieval times. The 1 MB L2 cache is a million characters of level two cache, 
the quickest kind of memory. L2 is like a small, quick-to-use space right next 
to the piece of paper on which you're using your fountain pen; it's like a 
desk blotter offering handy retrieval. The 1 GB of DDR3 memory is a billion 
characters of slower, but still really quick, working memory space. It's like 
having a desktop a thousand times bigger than the blotter. The 250 GB HDD is a 
relatively slower, but more capacious, hard disk drive for longer term storage 
area that holds 250 billion characters of everything, including Windows, 
Firefox, and all of your other programs and data. This is like having a set of 
filing cabinets near the desktop. Data files remain in the filing cabinets even 
while copies of them are on the desk top being used.

Here's a link to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about how to remove 
Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700#stepsforwin7 

I notice the article itself has a version number 12 attached to it, so these 
instructions have been changing over time, and may, or may not, tell all that 
needs to be known about the procedure and consequences of IE8 removal.


Ken