DescentBB

Recently one of the two PC's at my dad's office was ONLY performing Internet Explorer 7 at just under 56% of the speed of Firefox 3 in the Download Direction.

With NO activity between the PC's or the opposite PC accessing the Internet, I did 3 sets of tests using http://www.speedtest.net one at a time in both browsers with them loaded at the same time.

The results were very consistant.

This was very very confusing!

First thing that I did was to get rid of the unnecessary Yahoo and Google Toolbars.

This did speed up Internet Explorer 7 a little... but not enough.

Next thing was to get rid of unnecessary ActiveX controls used by the previous secretary.

That made a major difference in the Download Speed in Internet Explorer 7... It didn't quite get up to the speed of Firefox 3 but it was a lot better.

However on the other PC, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3 were practically the same on speed.

Just thought this might be helpful to someone here.

Yes it's true, one of the biggest issues with both IE (any version) and FireFox is the items that you add to it. IE does a lot with \"BHO\" (browser helper objects) and ActiveX addons which may enhance the browser but also open flaws and weaknesses. Combine that with the addon toolbars and your have a recipe for a lousy browser experience. With FireFox it's (again) the toolbars but also the addons and plugins that obviously slow it down.

Maybe that’s the main reason I don’t have all the problems other people seem to have with IE. I run my comp in Spartan mode.

Oh, did I mention that the Google toolbar is evil…