I’ve had to downgrade to my old, fossil of a computer. It got me online, slowly but surely, just a year and a half ago, using AOL 4.0. (Speed and ease are not important to me, obviously.) The old dinosaur has a 1.2 gig hard drive, with 7 or 8 mb of RAM, depending on when you
ask it.
So where can I find a free web browser that will work with my old system?
I have an ISP (Earthlink, using a manual connection that the tech support guy graciously set up for me because my computer doesn’t have enough RAM to load Earthlink 5.0), but all I have on the computer right now is an ancient version of IE, and none of the web sites I normally use will accept anything earlier than IE 4.0. So I’m unable to sign on to Hotmail, Yahoo, Excite, etc. I can get to the home page, but I can’t complete the sign-on process to get to my e-mail account, for example. I get script error messages every time I access any web site at all, but I can occasionally read the page. Graphics are almost nonexistent, but I’m not concerned with
how good a page looks or how fast it loads. I just want access to my accounts! (And the SDMB has been the ONLY site that allowed me to log in! How odd…)
I’m certain there’s a way for me to access the web pages I need, because I did so on this exact same machine less than eighteen months ago. I just don’t know how to find a simple, free web browser.
Opera is small, and fast probably more to your liking. The only problem is that you have to pay to get rid of the ads. Mozilla, on the other hand, is totally free and by far the best browser out there.
Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 is probably your best bet. Firebird is optimized to be small and fast, and is free with no ads. However, on a system with only 8MB RAM, you’re fairly hosed no matter what you do. It might work, at least.
Might be worth picking up a stick of 34 or 64 MB RAM, depending on what your mainboard can use. RAM is dirt cheap these days. If you’re not sure what to get, tell us the model of computer you’re using. I reckon your system is old enough that it might be using 32-pin SIMMs.
The Mozilla page refuses to load for me; it just shows up as a bunch of gibberish, and looks like lines of text written over other lines. I’m trying to download Opera, but it says it’s going to take 3-4 hours (?!?!) Is that even possible?
