FWIW, I didn't really pay too much attention to the aesthetic changes, since I realized immediately that the lack of compatibility with many of my 20 or so add-ons would make upgrading at this time more pain than gain. But in my case I already have done some customizing of the look with FF3: Tabs on Top (I guess I was way ahead of FF4 with that one ;-). When using Iron/Chrome I liked that compact feeling and tried to imitate it, using also the add-ons below:) Tiny Menu Hide GUI Bars (hides, among other things, the status bar, making it a pop-up at the bottom left that display only when needed) Hide Caption Title Bar (The title bar in any browser has always seemed like a big waste of space to me.) As I say, I didn't look too closely at the new look of FF4, so it's possible that some of these add-ons are incompatible precisely because they are no longer necessary. (Like the hidden status bar ? Does it pop-up on FF4 when needed ? Or maybe show in the address bar as in Opera ?) But others of my add-ons (Favicon Picker, Text Link, and some others) are also incompatible. Perhaps their functionality has also been incorporated into the default behaviour of FF 4 as well. Or not. Maybe I'll get brave enough to try upgrading again next week. For now it's a waiting game..... As the OP, I appreciate the continued comments. Thanks ! :-)

From the Java settings in Control Panel, if you select the "Java" tab and then "View", how many product listings are there? The current one is 1.6.0_18. If older versions are also present, they can be highlighted and removed using the "Remove" button.

I've been using Firefox since longer than I can remember, and a beta version has never been pushed to me. Auto-updates to release versions, yes. Beta versions, no (I am not subscribed to the beta channel and have never been forced to it). Regards to browser security, there's a newly discovered vulnerability in the SSLv3 protocol -- POODLE is the acronym. It's a combination of browser and server. SSLv3 was superseded some while ago by TLS, but many servers are still running SSLv3 (along with TLS). A secure browser connection that starts on TLS can be tricked into downgrading to SSL 3.0 (if the connecting server still supports it), and a hacker can intercept bits of the data flow when that happens. The expectation is that SSL 3.0 will not be patched since it's considered outdated. Servers that are running it will (should) soon be reconfigured to no longer support it. Users who are running old browsers that don't support TLS will no longer be able to connect to secure sites such as online banking or shopping after servers no longer support SSLv3. The recommended defense until servers are fixed to to eliminate SSLv3 is for users to set their browser to not allow SSL 3.0 connections (minimum TLSv1). If your old browser of choice (or requirement) doesn't support TLS then you're stuck being susceptible, and will be out-of-luck when SSLv3 is fully redacted. IE6 , for example, supports TLSv1 but the option is not enabled by default, it must be manually turned on. (TLS is currently up to v3, which IE6 does not support past TLSv1.) Test your browser

OOhhh. I'm glad you posted! I am running XP service pack 3, but I know that some day, I'll have to move to Win7. Now, I wonder if there will be a problem with ThunderBird, my email utiltiy. Its time to mosey over to the MicroSoft site to see if they have published a compatibility list for Win7, or maybe a list of known incompatibles. As I understand it, all version of Windows up through Win98 tried to be backwards compatible with existing software. Legacy DOS programs were abandoned in XP. (There are some gurus who say they can make DOS programs work in XP, but with special techniques.) A complete break happened with Vista. Vista was a completely new operating system and a number of incompatibilites with older software occurred. I thought that Win7 was a remake of Vista to make it better behaved and I would expect software that ran in Vista should also run in Win7. However, I expect problems for software written for XP and older versions.