Microsoft’s .NET Firefox Extension
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Last February, Microsoft released a .NET 3.5 service pack via Windows Update. Part of the install process silently adds a Firefox extension allowing the browser to use the .NET ClickOnce feature. (The extension is named “Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant”.) There are some security concerns about this extension, and additionally, you can’t uninstall it without making a registry change. Needless to say, this irritated a good number of people. The uproar was so bad that Microsoft issued a patch allowing you to uninstall the extension normally.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has dropped to a 68% market share, while Mozilla’s Firefox is at 21% and Apple’s Safari is at 8%. In this case, at least, competition leads to innovation, which is good for the user.
Google has spent months working with Microsoft and modifying its latest version of Gmail to work with Internet Explorer 6. Apparently the Gmail code was too “modern” for the older browser to handle well. Does anyone else think this is hilarious?
From the article: “Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid-state disk[s].” So instead of asking Microsoft to change Windows, the 
Here at the Chad’s News network command center we’ve read lots of online articles that list various performance tweaks for Windows—and we’ve even implemented a few. Turns out that not all of them actually increase performance.