And I feel in exactly the same situation. Firefox is now officially pants. Realised that things were going awry when it changed all my settings each time a new version was downloaded. Now it takes forever to open my homepage. Tried Opera but there seem to be compatibility issues. I really would rather not use IE, but it seems like the least bad option at the moment. It seems amazing to me that we are forced to put up with such useless operating systems and browsers. Where's the choice when you need it?

Chrome is light, robust, reliable - all the things Firefox used to be.

I've had no problems with Chrome at all & happily recommend it.

Thought the book was excellent. Nice Cold War focussed thriller.

Film didn't quite cut it for me. Eastwood was miscast....

on the Mac & Pc works for me.
(It's The world's fastest web browser, you know?)

I agree Paul, Firefox is rubbish. Every night, every night, it's just the same; it either crashes, takes ages to load up or freezes and comes up with "Not responding" message. It's a total pain, such is the slowness of my computer and the horror that is Windows Vista, this thread reply has taken two hours to write! Well, not quite that long, but you get my drift!

Firefox still runs fine for me.

There seems to be a pattern emerging here. My PC is less than 6 months old. I paid £40 extra to have it built with XP installed. Best move I made when I spec'd it.

Hint: don't use Vista.

to make it look pretty, firefox never gives me any trouble at all. But I'm using a macbook, so maybe it's a vista problem.

Using Firefox 3.5.3 on a Macbook Pro. It's a joy and far, far better than Chrome, Safari, Opera et. al.

I also use Thunderbird for Mail and Songbird for a music player* so I'm a bit of a Mozilla fanboy. One day I will switch to Ubuntu and evolve to the next level..

* when not using the quite excellent VLC player.

Was scratching my head reading the thread - I hadn't noticed any problems. But then I'm an old fashioned XP kind of a guy. It works well on Apple too - faster than Safari in my Mac.

as well as Vista and XP. I have oodles of plug-ins (Sage, FoxClocks, Flagfox, Ad-block et al). I've never had an issue with it, though I wish they'd come out with an official 64bit version.

I'm happy to report that Windows7 is light years past Vista, which will surely be the new Microsoft Bob

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

when Firefox kept crashing, taking ages to load etc. When I first switched to it (on Vista) from IE it was superb, but every upgrade to has made it worse.

plenty of extensions running.

Fairly fast.

Rock solid.

No problem.

I am not about to trot out the tired old Mac/PC thing as I've used Windows 7 a little in the release candidate phase and it too was a much better effort than the utterly sucky Vista.

pretty damn fine for me and faster than Safari but I do flip every 6 months or so, and was I a Camino (nope, thought not) man for about 2 years

I used to use Firefox up until a year ago then suffered with exactly what everyone else is complaining about. Switched to Opera and am very happy (I have a Mac G5). Safari is rubbish!

if you're on a Mac that is

No problems here. That said, I just use it as a basic browser and don't go in for the whistles and bells which were FF's usp.

I run Firefox and Safari on MAC OS 10.5.8 - they both run fast as I want. I also have a EEEPC that runs XP and Ubuntu. Firefox is great in Ubuntu, but a little clunky in XP. However, it is still faster then IE. I guess this is a RAM issue on the netbook.

who can't just run out and buy a different computer/OS, what's the recommendation? (Have tried Safari, thought it rubbish. Am curiously reluctant to try Chrome, primarily because my perception of the Google Corp is that they are an unnecessarily instrusive organisation)

I'm running it on a PC with Vista Home Premium (64 bit) and a laptop with Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit), both with various add-ons, and it's just great on both, and very very stable.

If you've never used it you'll be astounded at how fast it is. There ARE occasional glitches with sites but these get fewer as the browser become more mature. Only a handful of extensions as yet (and only if you use the dev version)

install and get it to import your settings. Just don't uninstall whatever you're using until you know you want to stick with it.

Of internet-related sabotage!

I use Firefox and have never experienced a crash.....until five minutes after first reading this thread, and then it went boing during a Google search. How very odd.

However, that aside, I am very happy with it. Works fine with XP, and I've also switched to Thunderbird for my email after Outlook Express permanently mislaid 2,500 messages.

Have never heard of Chrome, mind, so I might go and have a look.

Gave up on IE years ago unless I am forced to use it at work - then its always an old version e.g. IE6

I'm running Firefox on this Vista desktop - and its fine. There are occassionally crashes - but its not as bad as some make out. I just like the fact you can choose from a huge selection of add-in's. Plus password remembering for non-financial sites

Chrome downloaded it - seems ok - but it lacks the functionality of firefox - would only transfer over if FF became a dog.

Safari - got it too - the Apple shop home page just annoys me - just no reason to use

I use FF on my work PC which runs XP - latest version of FF - no problems.

Perhaps it may be a memory problem or machines need defragging

The great thing is the average user has a good choice of browsers and Microsoft will not rule the world with IE browser. I remember using Netscape and how they were elbowed out of the market by IE.