Yes, Maxthon is a better IE than IE, however, it’s still IE, and thus it suffers from the same ailments and limitations as IE imposes.  During the entire IE7 beta program, the blogs were full of testers begging the IE7 team to give Maxthon serious consideration.  Either as a potential acquisition target, or simply as a partner.  Why reinvent the wheel?  It was a valid point and a very good question.  Microsoft ignored it entirely.  It seems as though they ignored Maxthon entirely as well.  Too bad.  They could have learned an enormous amount of things that would have made IE7 a much more impressive release than it turned out to be.  Alas, we have IE8 to look forward to.  Or do we?  Last year, Microsoft mentioned it quite often.  This year however, they’ve adopted amnesia.  IE-what?

Maxthon 2 is really nice in my opinion (probably worthless to anyone reading this).  However, even though it has the best ad blocking (especially embedded ads) of any browser or toolbar plug-in I’ve used yet, it’s also noticably slower due to the precaching and scanning it does to block those ads.  Of all the browsers, it is the slowest to render complex web pages.  Firefox 2 and IE7 are about equal, but only because some sites render faster in one or the other, so the net result is a washout.  Opera is pretty good, but not as fast at rendering many sites as IE7 or Ff2 (again, in my personal experience).

Regardless, Firefox isn’t getting off the hook by me.  I’m in total agreement that Mozilla has taken up the crack pipe and seen the light at the end of the bloat tunnel.  Mozilla!  It’s a friggin train!  Headed straight for you!!  Turn back!!  I really hope FF3 makes a turnabout in that respect, letting users shoulder the use of extensions as they see fit.  We shall see.

Opera?  What’s that?  You say Opera is superior?  In some respects, yes.  I was an early user of Opera and it never ceases to amaze me how many features Opera debuted, which were so quickly copied without any credit given.  Opera didn’t do enough to defend their work.  They also stuck with the retail business model for far too long, giving free browsers an easy opportunity to close the feature gaps, and expand their marketing.  I dare say far more humans on this planet know about Firefox than Opera.  A pity.  But it’s their own fault.  Oh yeah, the IE emulation feature was a fantastic effort, but it doesn’t work nearly well enough, but that’s for another day.

So, we have 2-1/2 browsers to choose from.  IE7, Ff2, and Opera9.  I don’t count Safari because I don’t have a Mac and Apple doesn’t stoop so low as to port it over to Linux or Windows.  I’m only counting those which are cross-platform.  I don’t count KDE’s Konqueror, or any of the hundreds of one-off browsers either, because they’re completely stupid.  I can’t understand why anyone even bothers making yet another web browser these days.  Even as crappy as the front-runners are, there’s no more room in the top three.  Find another solution to create.

What pisses me off most about the top three is the same: BLOAT.  They’re just too bloated.  IE also screwed up the toolbar and UI and treats users like robots by withholding customization features.  Firefox has a decent UI, but the code is too bloated and slow and some extensions conflict with others at times.  Opera is also getting too bloated and some of the UI features are just getting cluttered too much.  It’s obvious that fans in each camp are not going to tip their hats or hands to the others and therefore it’s never going to be easy to satisfy all the fans with one product.  I can still complain though.

FireFox 2.0 – Yes, while still my favorite browser, and miles ahead of IE7 (and crashes a hell of a lot less even on Vista), there are some irritating issues with 2.0.0.1 that I hope they resolve in 3.0. Having to restart the browser twice for most theme add-ons is one. On Vista it often flakes out with the mouse behavior. In many cases, scroll wheel movement is translated to text-scaling (aka “zoom”) regardless of settings.

IE7 - Do I really need to say why? Sheesh. Nice try (for Microsoft), but woefully inept attempt to match Firefox (or Opera). Of the current modern browsers, I place it near the bottom with Konqueror. Oh yeah – Why the hell does KDE even have it’s own browser?! WTF? Do we REALLY Need yet another friggin browser??? Does anyone use it?!?!?

iTunes 7.x – Losing mappings to remote libraries if the drive becomes unavailable. You’d think it would have a single “refresh” button, but no. You have to right-click and click “Get Info” on each track to refresh the link even after the drive mapping is re-established long ago. No click-n-drag for multi-select. Limited right-click options. No control over placement of MP4 files on the iPod (Podcast vs TV show vs Movie), it decides for you (often incorrectly).

Sony PSP - Oh my God.  I don’t even know where to begin with this one.  Sure, it’s neat.  It’s nifty.  But it’s still HALF-BAKED.  The keypad entry SUCKS SH*T. It cannot play inline media from web sites (MPG, AVI, WMV, MOV, not even MP4???).  The onboard memory is embarrassing.  The 30GB iPod costs less?  Holy crap.  Download a file from a web page that contains spaces and watch how it handles renaming (manually).  Horrible.  The memory expansion to 2GB is so-so, but the 4GB is a stupid clunky BRICK that not only adds bulk to the “portable” device, it adds weight.  It turns it from a portable game pad to a non-portable anchor.   Then comes the stupid-as-hell UMD idea.  They gave up and announced moving to SD cards, which they haven’t yet delivered on (I don’t count press releases, I’m talking about Best Buy and CompUSA store shelves). Sony failed us again.
Google Docs and Spreadsheets – Docs don’t seem to read Office 2003 Docs very reliably, even very VERY basic docs with a few words. It often says “failed to convert”. Spreadsheets has no fill-down option, so forget making a quick array of numbers or letters to layout a grid. Until it has more of the basic, age-old Excel and Lotus 123 features I can’t even consider switching. Amazing that after more than 2 decades they can’t just START with matching Lotus 123 capabilities.

Linux Media apps - They all suck at most things and suffice for the rest. I’m tired of settling. I want more. I don’t want to roll my own in C++ or Java either. C’mon. If Amarok or Banshee is the best they have, it’s pitiful. Burning CD’s and DVD’s on Linux PALES horribly in comparison to NeroVision on Windows. Almost any Window or Mac media app makes the Linux counterparts look like kindergarten. It’s a shame.

The Apple Keyboard – It just sucks. I hate it. I hate it as bad as the stupid Microsoft keyboard. They both suck. A basic QWERTY 101 key brick from Dell or HP is just fine for me. The fancy-shmancy function keys are just stupid. They scream “keyboards for f-ing idiots!” Do we really need a button to push to sync our stupid cameras? God almighty.
I hope you can see my “theme” here. I’m picking on EVERYONE, not just one or two. Quality is slipping badly. The aging programmers are retiring and nobody bothered to mentor the next batch. We’re in for trouble.

Vista - Regressions abound with so many features I can’t name them all. Inconsistent interface changes sprinkled across the platform. What the F*** did they do to the Network settings? OMG! Completely ruined! “Fiji” (codename for SP1) is aimed at addressing many of them, and remaining bugs, but won’t be out until Q3-Q4/07. Says a lot that they’re working on an SP before the RTM ships. Sad. Again: half-baked crap.