I have an older computer running Windows 98 SE. It came with
Internet Explorer 5.0. I should be able replace it with 5.5, but
attempts to download it from MS and install it seemed to get
nowhere. I suspect that back when it was new, about 8 years
ago, IE 5.5 was put on millions of CDs and bundled with computer
magazines. If so, does anyone have a copy they can mail to me?

To make it simple, I'll put my address right here. I've already
posted it on BAUT before and didn't get one, single, solitary bit
of mail. Not a postcard, not the Christmas fruitcake, not a dun
for my monthly payment on the Brooklyn Bridge -- nothing!

Jeff Root
48 - 27th Ave SE #4
Minneapolis, MN 55414

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Do not use MSIE.You will get your computer swarmed with spyware and virii very quickly.
Download Opera or Firefox.

That said, my home computer running IE7 on winXP with nothing but microsoft firewall, avira antivir, microsoft defender and IE7's own safety functions -so not even the google toolbar blocker, which is not necessary anymore in IE7- stays very clean, while this work PC running Firefox on Linux always makes my mailbox starting to suddenly receive and send spam. I don't even want to know what happens to the rest of the computer.

Now IE5.5 is older so less safe than IE7, but the same goes for installing old versions of other browsers. Arguments like "use this or that, you're safe" tend to have more exceptions than confirmations.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Well that spam is not a matter of web browser...

On what does it depend then, the firewall of this computer?

There certainly is a very strong dependency on amount of spam in my (web) mail box and whether I'm on this linux/firefox PC or my home XP/IE7 pc.

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Firefox is not bulletproof, and neither is any other browser. Admittedly, Firefox is probably more secure than IE5, but that's because of the outdated nature of IE5. IE7 is just as secure as FF2. I use FF2, true, but that's just because I prefer the features.

IE5.5 is the most popular browser from a couple of years ago. That's asking for safety problems . This is not microsoft bashing, this rule would be valid for any browser from any company. Basically you choose to become a nice fat piece of wildlife on which the poachers had years of targetting practice. Easy kill...

Only very good extra safety measures will make using IE5.5 a safe thing to do.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Why 5.5? IE 6 will run under Win 98 SE. I have it at home (although I haven't run it since I switched to Opera), and we also have it on one old Win 98 computer here at work.

BTW, after a nasty spyware infestation on that work computer,in the course of fixing which we discovered that the puter was also harboring some viruses, I acquired McAfee Virus Scan for my home box. After 4 years of going online nearly every day without an anti-virus product, I expected to find all sorts of nasties.

The only thing McAfee found was the fake virus test file I downloaded on their recommendation and left for the scanner to find. Otherwise the puter was clean as a whistle.

This is probably because I had spent those 4 years using a non-Microsoft browser, non-Microsoft email client (thus avoiding a lot of exploits targeted specifically to those products), had a couple of decent anti-spyware programs installed (Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware), a software firewall (Zonealarm) and wasn't dumb enough to open any email attachments that I wasn't already expecting from a trusted source (in fact, when a friend forwarded me an email with an executable attachment, I trashed it immediately and sent her a "don't you know any @#$% better" reply.

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Please enjoy your trip through this door.

There you touched upon a very important but often ignored factor: microsoft software is being used an awful lot, so if a virus maker gets into one of these products, he's able to do more damage than when he's able to break through the security of some obscure browser nobody uses. Result: a zillion viruses in for example IE, and one or two in the obscure browser. This says nothing about the inherent safety of either browser. Only if you'd somehow know how many attempts were made to break through each browser's safety and how many of those were successful, you could start to assess the inherent safety of each. Of course, for the end user only the practical safety is of importance: how much chance do I have of getting a virus? That's a tough one to answer. A popular, safe yet heavily attacked browser or an obscure, maybe less safe but also less attacked browser?

Anyway, indeed you can go for IE6, I've even had that running on win'95 IIRC. And IE6 still is quite up to date indeed, it will be a lot safer than IE5.5.

So, let's try downloading and installing IE6 then, shall we?

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I don't recall what the requirements were, but my computer doesn't
have what is needed for IE 6.

I had IE 5.5 on this computer before, for almost 4 years, but had to
reformat the hard drive, didn't back up the OS, and no longer have
the original CD-ROM. IE 5.0 is crashing on some sites, such as IMDB,
where IE 5.5 might not. The IMDB problem started some time after
I went back to IE 5.0, though, so I can't be sure IE 5.5 will fix it.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Jeff,

I will send you a CD-RW with Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2, Opera 6.06, DirectX 9c, AVG Free Edition 7.5, Ad-Aware and Spybot - Search & Destroy.

I'm out of the CD-R media, so I hope your CD player can read it.

This is for the 166 MHzer, right?

There are some tiny firewalls available for senior 'puters, such as Outpost Firewall Free 1.0, but I'll leave that up to you.

i personally dont use internet exploder at all anymore- mostly because on this very elderly 98se machine- its too bloomin slow!!!

my personal favs for older 98/98se machines like this and my old lappy are

opera (6.02 or 6.05 work best ive found) for my `not somewhere id take my mother' sites ;-) ....- with java and javascript turned off and popups not allowed

firefox 1.0.3 for those sites i trust that opera doesnt work properly in..

zone alarm (version 2.6.362) for the firewall

as microsoft no longer supports 98/98se ive been using http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html
to patch 98's many security exploits

avg for antivirus(current version)

for antispy/malware i use adaware,spybot search and destroy,ccleaner and win patrol (all current versions)

all the older versions are availaable on the original websites (usually in archives or folders marked something similair


all these work well on prehistoric systems like this old aptiva or my compaq armarda lappy- and surprisingly well
both are quite capable little netsurfers despite the laptop being only 300mhz with 32mb of ram!!

currently on the aptiva opera has 17 windows open and two firefox windows as well

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No, I'm being ordinarily sarcastic. Don't make me get very sarcastic. You wouldn't like me when I'm very sarcastic. - JayUtah



Surely if you are going to start a conspiracy theory it is best to start with something that might have a grain of truth or reality in it. To start with the preposterous and go downhill from there is just stupid. steve(primus) (Avatar)

Thank, you, Alan!

Maksutov has offered to send what looks to be the same browser,
so you might want to coordinate with him so only one of you puts
too much effort into this.

Yes, it is the 166 MHz machine. I've been offered a used 600 MHz
machine, but it hasn't materialized yet.

The info on my CD player says it does RW. I've only burned CD-R,
and don't know that I've ever put a CD-RW in it. The thing cannot
recognize the majority of audio CDs I stick in.

I've been given to understand that I can't do DirectX 9 on this
machine / OS. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says I have 6.1a.
What I'd really like to see is some indication of when any DirectX
function is ever used. If it turned out that it is only ever used in
web advertisements (or never at all), I'd get rid of it completely.
From the names of the functions in the Windows Registry, I can
see that many have never been used. Possibly none of them.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

I mailed the CD shortly after my post.

That's old.

I burned the CD with Nero Express 6.

DirectX 6.1a is installed with Windows 98 SE. Your hardware is probably DirectX 2 or 5 capable, so installing DirectX 9c is likely pointless.

boppa's suggestion of ZoneAlarm v. 2.6.362 sounds right and can be found at OldVersion.com.

Thanks, Alan! I'll be watching for it, and let you know how long it
took just in case your'e interested.

Do Flash animations use DirectX? I skimmed through the Wikipedia
article on Flash and didn't see anything to that effect. If they don't,
then I doubt that my computer ever uses DirectX at all.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Your welcome, Jeff.

In case you have just joined us, this is a follow-up of Jeff's November 2006 thread, "Want advice on Windows software."

As for Internet Explorer 6 SP1, Windows 98 SE meets only Microsoft's minimum OS requirement for the software. They recommend Windows NT, ME, or 2000 on a PC equipped with a Pentium III-class CPU (450 MHz to 1.4 GHz) and 128 MB of RAM.

Practically speaking, IE 5.5 SP2 is the end of the Microsoft road for most PCs made before 1999.

I wouldn't worry too much about flash or DirectX on a 166 MHz system with 64 MB of RAM, Jeff.

Your PC is better suited for word processing and light Web surfing, not playing games. It should have little trouble running the following software:

* OpenOffice 1.1.5 (66.8 MB)
* Sun Java Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 11 (15.8 MB)
* Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0.5 (9.95 MB)

If the first CD-RW I sent you is readable with your player, I can send you the above software on a CD-RW disk. If CD-RW media is not working for you, I can burn everything onto a CD-R disk (after a trip to the store).

Java should be installed before installing OpenOffice. Java will provide OpenOffice with full functionality.

Adobe Flash is currently a software-based 2D renderer. A 3D Flash player would likely have to depend on DirectX or OpenGL and a VGA card.

A program like swfXXL uses DirectDraw, a DirectX 2D API, to supposedly run 2D Flash applications at full screen without any loss of speed. The program does not require a VGA card, but having one certainly would not hurt. The FAQ page states that a 133 MHz PC might be able to run a 320x240 Flash game fullscreen.

It's sort of like having an Atari 7800 inside your PC.

Alan,

The CD arrived in today's mail. Full-size case and all.
I can read the directory and file properties just fine.

Thank you!

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Nice! I'd helped you, if postal fees from here to there weren't higher than the value of the PC

I hope all goes well now. Nice to see BAUTers helping each other.

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Jeff,

I hope it works for you.

I sent a second disk yesterday afternoon that contains OpenOffice, Sun Java and Adobe Acrobat. However, the version of Java on the disk is not the version Sun recommends for Windows 98 and Windows ME. The disk contains JRE Version 5.0 Update 11, which I downloaded from their archive page. This morning, I checked Sun's FAQ section and discovered that they recommend JRE Version 5.0 Update 12, a version of Java not listed on their before-mentioned archive page. Either version should work with Windows 98.

The full-size CD jewel case and a padded envelope offers better protection for the CD while being handled with care by postal workers.

If you want any postage service to handle your package with care, only "nuclear danger" logos and texts will serve you. Disadvantage is that several regulations deal with sending packages with these labels, so that might make things a bit more complex. So the best option indeed is to make the package bomb proof.

Don't scare me, I'll need the postal services for a big package in a few weeks...

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Jeff,

The latest Flash Player for your level of hardware running Windows 98 and IE 5.x is version 7,0,70,0.

I updated my Flash Players for Opera and IE to version 9,0,47,0 in response to an Adobe security bulletin released yesterday.