Computer browsers: Internet Explorer

Many of us have objected to Microsoft's habit of trying to force us into using 'everything Microsoft' with their operating systems, instead of allowing us to choose components like the browser, or the media player, and that's given them a lot of backlash, and deservedly so.

There are a lot of browsers available out there in cyberspace, and some, like Lunascape, made in Tokyo, use three different rendering engines instead of just one. That's like having three browsers in one almost.

There are others, like Opera, with its 'Speed Dial' and 'Stash' that offer some novel features to speed up the surfing process and make browsing easier.

And there's my old favorite, Firefox which has a wide selection of very useful add-ons, such as 'Better Privacy' to find and remove those LSOs, Local System Objects, better known as 'Supercookies' which, unlike regular cookies, can't be detected by your normal cookie-handling programs, and never expire, and are
bigger than usual cookies, and can and do call home to pass along your personal information to whomever sent them to you. They can also act like other executive programs to make changes to your system and perform their own operations, completely unknown to you. And 'Better privacy' is the only add-on I know which can find and remove these 'supercookies' - and you can set it to work with your regular browser options for handling history and other cookies, so that your "clear history" setting also includes these others you didn't even know about until you got 'Better Privacy'.

And these are just some of the reasons it's nice to have choices, and a quick look at a couple of those. We aren't limited to Mighty Microsoft's pet projects.
In PC-BSD for example, when you install it, there's a list of approved programs
to choose from, and you aren't compelled to accept the native browser if you prefer some other one, and one of those on that list is Firefox, and another is
SeaMonkey, which is also a Mozilla creation like Firefox, but with different features. I use it on there because I'm already familiar with Mozilla's Firefox, and I know it works. And the point is, nobody's twisting my arm, nor should they. If we're brainy enough to be selecting an operating system for a computer then hopefully we're also smart enough to decide which  of a dozen or a dozen and a half different browsers we'd like to use on it. 

And you aren't limited to one. You can have several, if you like. I usually have three or four, because if I'm working on one, doing something like this, it's nice to have another to use if I need to look up something else while I'm doing this, or get these screenshots that I've included here. Here are some other alternatives.