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PCWorld Dubs Firefox Best Product of 2005 303

Posted by Zonk from the /agree dept.
Peaceful_Patriot writes "PCWorld's list of the 'Best Products of 2005' is out and Firefox tops the list. Also notables are GMail at number 2, Apple OS X, Tiger at number 3, Skype ranks in at 8 and Ubuntu at 26!" From their Firefox article: "Are you sick and tired of Internet Explorer? Have you grown weary of the constant vulnerabilities and patches? Do you scratch your head at sudden program lockups and crashes? Are you dismayed that Microsoft hasn't lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape's Navigator browser at the dawn of the century? Yeah, me too."
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PCWorld Dubs Firefox Best Product of 2005 More

PCWorld Dubs Firefox Best Product of 2005

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  • Wow, Dell! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by matr0x_x ( 919985 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:31AM (#14172208) Homepage
    I'm very surprised to sell Dell listed so many times. I mean, Firefox, Apple, Palm and a lot of the other top 10 were very predictable, but I'd never have guessed Dell. Poor Microsoft didn't even crack the top 100...

    • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:2, Informative)

      by mboos ( 700155 )
      47. Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 Media Player

      Of course, I'm not endorsing this product. Haven't used it myself since I stopped using Windows a year and a half ago (and I use iTunes now when I'm forced to).

      • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Skim123 ( 3322 )
        Is it just me or do all media players really seem to suck ass these days? I use iTunes because I want a podcasting tool integrated with my media player, and I do buy the occassional track from iTunes, but I don't like how iTunes just basically has one big ol' library that I have to tag and create playlists to filter.

        Not a big fan of WMP either. I liked WinAmp a lot, back before podcasts and before I bought "Apple" music through iTunes... I just wish someone would come out with a music/video media player th

        • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by nmb3000 ( 741169 )
          Is it just me or do all media players really seem to suck ass these days?

          I've started to wonder the same thing. It seems like developers have lost the focus that you used to see. Instead of just a good and efficient audio or video player, they all have to play video, audio, and DVDs, have 1000 visualizations, a big media library, burn CDs and DVDs, use a gaudy GUI that eats CPU cycles like candy, and make hot pockets.

          On XP I personally use:
          • Winamp 2.91 for my audio needs

            Nullsoft is an example of a group that

          • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:2, Informative)

            by Fusen ( 841730 )
            If you have any problems with WMP10 then try out VLC videolan.org, and they should go away pretty quick ;D
          • As far as video and DVD goes, I've used Media Player Classic. It's an excellent program, the only little issue I got is that playback is sometimes choppy over the network, then again WMP and VLC act in the same way, so maybe there's something deeper going on. Wish I could manually adjust the video buffer though. Having a media library is a complete waste of time for video.

            When it comes to music, I haven't really found a real favorite. WinAmp 2.91 is good if you just want basic playback/playlist support, but
          • foobar2000 [foobar2000.org] for audio.
            for video. [sourceforge.net]
            Haven't found anything these can't play on Windows yet...
            but then, I simply don't watch realmedia.
        • Is it just me or do all media players really seem to suck ass these days?

          Actually mplayer is great, you can run it with GUI (which I personally don't need because the keyboard and mouse navigation works great without it) or without. It's fast, it's simple, it's customizable and it does what it should do.

        • There are no good media players which do everything. iTunes is great for music, and steadily improving, but does bugger all for video. WMP does everything (Well, mostly) but is a PITA to use. WinAmp plays everything known to man, and plays it well, but doesn't deal with things like podcasts without extra plugins... it goes on.
        • I use iTunes because I want a podcasting tool integrated with my media player, and I do buy the occassional track from iTunes, but I don't like how iTunes just basically has one big ol' library that I have to tag and create playlists to filter.

          The Library is just a Show All view. Any media player would be pretty crap if it didn't have one.

          Now how is it that you want to see your collection organised?

    • You are exaggerating a bit. Listed Dell products are big LCD monitors, projector, colour laser printer and PDA. Dell PCs (cheap, made for masses) suck but all these are fine pieces (don't know about the PDA, haven't seen it).

      MS is represented by WMP (haven't seen that one either, don't run windows). They haven't made much stuff this year, though.

      Which is a good thing.

      There is one MS product that I really like and can't use any other anymore - their optical usb wheel mouse.

    • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Praxx ( 918463 )
      Visual Studio 2005 should at least be in the Top 10, IMHO. Alot of Microsoft's products may suck, but their development tools are top-notch.

    • Firefox 1.5 supports Pango with Cairo, (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      so that I can see Chinese in bold style now, which I have been waiting since I first use Linux:

      http://wangxiaohu.org/#post-64 [wangxiaohu.org]

    • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by oztiks ( 921504 )
      I can totally understand why Dell is there, the sales model behind Dell is brilliant. You dont need to see a PC before you buy it unless you get off on fancy cases and sexy keyboards.

      So for 90% of people who need a new computer they need it to be a) cheap b) working order with good support, Dell provides this without the shopfront therefore reduces overall cost. They also offer good server products with easy to setup business leases and an array of SLA services so they have that market in the bag.

      I guess th

    • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Malor ( 3658 )
      Well, I ended up with both the 2405FPW and the 3100CN laser. The 3100CN is just okay.... decent, nothing too great.

      The 2405FPW, on the other hand, is really quite remarkable. It's HUGE, vivid, and lovely to look at all day. Excellent color. Good for gaming. If you're a really topflight FPSer, you may not like it, but for normal humans, it's just superb.

      Out of the box, the brightness is INSANE, burn-out-your-retinas bright. After you've had it a month or two, it fades to more reasonable levels. When I
      • Your post and the PCWorld list just might be the push I needed to shell out $959-$1199 on it. It's gotta be good if listed above Google, the one thing Steve Ballmer wants to Fucking Kill® more than anything else. I've not much dough, but I can still get it...

        My E173FP has that change-color-at-different-angle-and-different-bri g htness thing too. What I worry about is the (flourescent?) light: When does the 2405's dim out entirely? I'd still get it if it lasted a year or two...

        • Re:Wow, Dell! (Score:3, Informative)

          by Malor ( 3658 )
          After thinking about it some, I realized I've had this monitor longer than I thought. I got probably the very first run... it arrived in early March. I think the last time I changed the brightness was probably early August. Currently, at brightness 80, it's Very Bright instead of Crazy Retina-Scorching Bright like it was out of the box.

          I'm SURE it'll last longer than a year or two, at least if it's working properly. Without checking, I think the warranty is three years, so to protect themselves against

  • PC World Product of the year 1995... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by curmi ( 205804 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:32AM (#14172217)
    ...was OS/2. So don't get too cocky. :-)
  • Two random things in IE that need to change soon: ctrl-l pops up a seperate window for you to enter a location, WHY? Ctrl-f does the same. Firefox handles both of these much more smoothly.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:45AM (#14172261)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • ALT+<key> should stick to activating buttons and menus. In other languages, there are menus that should have the accelerator D, and there are more of these examples of these collisions. I'm pretty sure the designers of IE has had plenty of reason to smack themselves in the head for not thinking this through beforehand.

        Epiphany [gnome.org] for instance refuses to follow the conventions on this one, and while it is a bit annoying the first period of time, I do think they are making the right descision. CTRL+L still

    • Re:IE Really hasn't improved (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you're still using IE, then try this ...

      Alt+F4

    • Two random things in IE that need to change soon: ctrl-l pops up a seperate window for you to enter a location, WHY? Ctrl-f does the same. Firefox handles both of these much more smoothly.

      Indeed. Firefox actually has a very sensible way of dealing with this: if the location bar is not present (such as in a JavaScript opened window) then it pops up a separate window for Ctrl+L. Same goes for the search field aka Ctrl+K. It has many benefic side effects. For instance, on a smaller screen, you don't have to ke

  • Old News (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saganaga ( 167162 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:37AM (#14172236) Homepage
    From page 1 [pcworld.com] of the article:
    From the July 2005 issue of PC World magazine
    I thought it seemed funny that the review of Gmail said "check out Gmail the moment it launches", and that the Firefox review was from December 2004!
  • Something is fishy. No mention of the iPod nano, and Rio's crappy Carbon player is at 13? WTF?

    More PC bias going on here....

  • Stuff that mattered. (Score:5, Informative)

    by teslatug ( 543527 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:42AM (#14172253)
    This was published in July. Is the story a dupe?

  • It certainly is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by quokkapox ( 847798 ) <quokkapox@gmail.com> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:45AM (#14172263)
    If you're like me, and you have installed the SessionSaver extension, you will find that Firefox 1.5 is extremely stable on Windows XP, and you now have 50-odd tabs of pages you will read "someday soon, when I'm not on the net" saved up in other windows.

    I hope I am not the only victim of this scourge.

    • You mean like opera does by default? (Score:4, Informative)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @04:11AM (#14172678) Journal
      It sure is handy even if it leads to me currently having an embarrising amount of tabs.

      It is a live saver however because the one thing that killed windows/IE for me years ago was that just as you found the site with the real free porn, eh I mean real usefull bit of info IE or windows or both crashed forcing you to start searching from the start again.

      Opera on Linux went through a bit of problems at first but the crashes didn't matter, just restart and continue were you left off.

      If only MS had at any point in its history realized that people are not upset about crashes, they are upset about lost work, they would not now be ..... eh top IT company with a strangle hold on the desktop, office software and internet browser market......

      Where was I going with this?

      • The crashes when you find the porn may be exploits posted on the sites meant to exploit IE flaws. The porn really isn't free; someone's trying to build a botnet. At times, Firefox will not suffer from the exploit per se, but it will crash. For an example, look at astalavista.box.sk. It gives out warez, sure, but it also tries to infect your computer with spyware.
      • It is a live saver however because the one thing that killed windows/IE for me years ago was that just as you found the site with the real free porn, eh I mean real usefull bit of info IE or windows or both crashed forcing you to start searching from the start again.

        A pity IE has no feature which will show you the history of sites visited today. Then you could just press some key combination (maybe Ctrl-H to make it easy to remember, we're talking about IE users after all), press the button for "sites vi

      • It is a live saver however because the one thing that killed windows/IE for me years ago was that just as you found the site with the real free porn, eh I mean real usefull bit of info IE or windows or both crashed forcing you to start searching from the start again.

        Of course, that didn't have anything to do with the porn sites all trying to exploit the latest crash/hack/insert bookmark/take over homepage/install ad/spy/malware bug in IE/Windows, particularly the "free" ones. There are *still* no free lunch

  • Ubuntu (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 )
    How much of Ubuntu's praise comes from the free CDs that they give away? I just got mine last week (and again today), and while it is a great Distro, I don't really see what is so special about it.

    • it just works. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jasonhamilton ( 673330 ) <(jason) (at) (tyrannical.org)> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @02:10AM (#14172331) Homepage
      You're right, on the surface it looks like any other gnome based distro.

      However, if you install it on a bunch of diff laptops, then compare it to another linux distro, you'll quickly find that what makes Ubuntu so good is that there is a lot of polish underneath.

      Widescreen is detected and configured. Most wifi cards, auto mounting of external drives, sound card. Even special keyboard keys function on most systems I've installed it on.

      I think Ubuntu is headed in the right direction. What makes Windows so great for noobs is that they install it and then they click to get on teh interweb. No mess, no fuss. One shouldn't have to spend all day trying to get the damn OS configured.

      • Re:it just works. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ccp ( 127147 )
        What makes Windows so great for noobs is that they install it and then they click to get on teh interweb.

        You mean like Mandrake (now Mandriva) has been doing since at least 1999?

        Cheers,
    • People tend to like Ubuntu because, moreso than any other distro, it "just works" on a wide variety of configurations. Moreover, it's fast enough, quite streamlined, and has a large package repository. There is nothing particularly "special" about it. It just strikes a particularly good balance of qualities.
    • Well, one thing that's special is the fact that it's the *only* distro I've seen that has a PPC LiveCD.

      Other than that, it's the best PPC linux distro I've used. I'm using it on this ibook right now actually.
  • The problem for Microsoft is the overwhelming popularity of its browser. Virus writers and hackers target IE because there are so many systems running it.

    Yeah right. And I thought you were PROMOTING firefox...

    Friendly Fire, anyone?
    • Actually, I think there is a point there. While I like Firefox, I think that a XUL-based web-browser is an inherently insecure architecture because there is no inherent boundary between UI and content. Yes, there is a security boundary that is enforced, but this doesn't strike me as any more secure than IE's security zones (and a lot of IE vulnerabilities involve zone privilege elevation).

      In other words, Firefox trusts what is really *content* (basically XML documents with CSS and Javascript) in chrome to
      • The difference is that in Firefox the security problems stay into the application layer.
        With IE the security problems are in your system as a whole.

        So ultimately Firefox is always less vunrable than IE.
        • The difference is that in Firefox the security problems stay into the application layer.
          With IE the security problems are in your system as a whole.

          I see no reason to make that assumption. Sure it is a less homogenous platform. But this doesn't present problems that are not trivially insurmountable.

          The basic issue is this: you have four basic components to Firefox or the Mozilla Suite's browser: content (web pages), chrome, the MPR, and XP-COM extensions. If you want additional functionality, for examp

  • Not quite with the times? (Score:3, Informative)

    by cbuskirk ( 99904 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:57AM (#14172297)
    I understand the list is quite long, but surely PC World could have done better than use their July 2003 review for the Itunes Music Store. 200,000 songs? Mac Only?

  • Dupe (Score:5, Informative)

    by Doomstalk ( 629173 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @01:59AM (#14172303)
    Not only is this article from June, but it's been reported [slashdot.org] on before.

  • Alienware? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AIX-Hood ( 682681 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @02:06AM (#14172319)
    I'm surprised to see an Alienware machine at #6 seeing as their post-sales support has been atrocious for as long as they've been around. I know a good number of people who've bought machines from them; none of them would ever do it again. I guess this goes along with Cnet giving the Maxtor 250 external firewire drives their highest rating, while they have a 90% failure rate within the first 6-8 months.
    • It is possible that they have a weak support because they assume it is the 3lite techies buying Alienware boxes for PC gaming. 90% sounds way too high, that percentage almost justify closing shop. Could it be an issue with ATI and Nvidia cards overclocked and fried?

  • My work here is done (Score:5, Funny)

    by theblackdeer ( 453464 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @02:09AM (#14172325) Homepage
    Mozilla Team: "Well guys, we got our goal. PC World #1 spot. Close the web site down; we're satisfied with a job well done."

  • Erm.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Skim123 ( 3322 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @02:18AM (#14172357) Homepage
    re you dismayed that Microsoft hasn't lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape's Navigator browser at the dawn of the century?

    I am not an IE zealot (I use FireFox), but this statement isn't 100% accurate. MS did add popup blocking support [microsoft.com] for IE in SP2. And there are a ton of new features for IE7.

    Granted, too little, too late, and way behind FireFox's release/feature schedule (which is why I use FF and not IE), but at least Microsoft is doing something. Proof that competition is a Good Thing.

    • And there are a ton of new features for IE7...

      Yeah, I noticed the new security features the other day when I was ordering my copy of Duke Nukem Forever...

    • Granted, too little, too late, and way behind FireFox's release/feature schedule (which is why I use FF and not IE), but at least Microsoft is doing something. Proof that competition is a Good Thing.

      Competition is indeed a Good Thing, but the trouble with Internet Explorer is largely that it doesn't support standards. Microsoft has only minimally stepped in the direction of standards compliance, and only because with the rise of other good browsers like opera and firefox, they had to or die. But rest assu

    • I think the article is out of date since it also complains about Firefox being missing a few things that are most definitely in it as of the latest version available.

  • voipbuster.com (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kyoko21 ( 198413 )
    I rank voipbuster.com as the best app of 2005 because since that I have made the switch to ditch my long distance carrier for voipbuster, I have only paid a total sum of $1.28 USD for my long distance calls here in the United States as well as my long distance calls overseas to a select few countries, which includes Taiwan. :-) Nothing like free long distance as long as I have internet connectivity. Now where is the nearest open wifi access point at...lol.

  • Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @02:29AM (#14172386) Homepage Journal
    Have you grown weary of the constant vulnerabilities and patches? Do you scratch your head at sudden program lockups and crashes? - be careful, it is possible to say the same thing about FF now. I see FF crash very often now. Patches and vulnerabilities? FF has them too. It does look like FF gets the fixes much faster than IE though.
    • I was having trouble with the update from 1.07 to 1.5... having gone through all the RCs, and having plugins from 1.07, some stuff got kinda borked up. I uninstalled, saved my bookmarks, and wiped the Mozilla directory in Application data. The subsequent installation has been flawless. (although I haven't put back my plugins yet.... likely the source of the original problem.)

  • What about Vim? (Score:3, Funny)

    by LittleBigScript ( 618162 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @02:38AM (#14172403) Homepage Journal
    It is up to version 6.4
  • PCWorld Dups Firefox Best Product of 2005?

  • office software (Score:2, Interesting)

    by towsonu2003 ( 928663 )
    wtf -> OS X 10.4 and Ubuntu are office software??? (http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,1207 63,pg,3,00.asp [pcworld.com])

  • Why can't a browser give feedback? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When a website sucks, wouldn't it be cool if you could press a button and tell the geek who runs it to screw off? When a website requires cookies and javascript just to view their products or get some info, wouldn't it nice to tell them to suck eggs?

    So why not put some buttons in the browser that simply load a URL like http://somesite.com/YourSiteSucks [somesite.com] or http://somesite.com/IHateCookiesStopRequiring [somesite.com] or other words "GreatResource", "GreatSite", "TooManyAds", "PopupsSuck".

    It would request the URL but not bot
    • This is a good idea. It could be done easily within your own system. FireFox could do it. I've thought about this, too, but in a more limited way. I would like to have MY brower let me make MY own judgements about sites.

      If clicking a link takes me to a site that I don't want to visit again, I'd like to have a button I can click to register this within my own browsing setup. Then, if I click again, FF could resist loading the site. The resistance could be indicated in various ways (a beep? changed c

  • I am surprised MacOSX is behind Firefox. The later doesn't provide a huge functionality leap over earlier products such as Opera or Safari . On the other hand, everyone who used OSX for a month will never go back to Windows. Let's start with a fact that moving a window on XP leaves annoying flicker on the background while the "damaged" windows redraw themselves, while on MacOSX the movement is perfectly smooth.

    I would give a nod to GMail though, because instant search and responsive UI for web mail are quit

  • The list seems rather arbitrary (Score:4, Funny)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Saturday December 03, 2005 @03:10AM (#14172494) Journal
    I could be wrong, but I think they just took a top 10 list and padded it with 90 sponsored links.

  • No Competition = No Innovation (Score:5, Informative)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug AT geekazon DOT com> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @03:20AM (#14172521) Homepage
    Are you dismayed that Microsoft hasn't lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape's Navigator browser at the dawn of the century?

    Some people would label that statement hollow cynicism. But in fact, a Microsoft manager told me straight out when IE 6 was about to be released that it wasn't really going to have any new features, because with Netscape pretty much dead there wasn't much point in developing IE anymore.

    Microsoft had already introduced XmlHttpRequest as an ActiveX object with IE5. They had all the pieces in place back then to promote the off-channel request technique and give it a nifty name like "AJAX." Web apps could have been 5 years ahead of where they are today, and MS would have had a huge head start instead of now scrambling to catch up with Google.

  • Odd (Score:2, Interesting)

    by halleluja ( 715870 )
    How can you rate Firefox no #1 and Google (search engine) at #16 ?? Wikipedia is certainly useful..

  • Firefox vs IE... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RoadDogTy ( 921208 )
    I agree that it's valid to criticise IE for a lull in development once they won the browser war and ousted Netscape. I also think the competition between Firefox and IE is ultimately great for the consumer, since it has sparked a new emphasis in feature development for all the major browsers. This article seems to take it to an unwarranted extreme however, as the latest IE (particularly through SP2 and the optional MSN Toolbar) developments have added a lot in terms of security, for example the new anti-p

  • oo.org (Score:2, Insightful)

    by eneville ( 745111 )
    What? Did these guys not hear about openoffice? How can media player be rated > oo.org!!!!

  • Definitely a deserving #1 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xot ( 663131 ) <fragiledeath@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @04:46AM (#14172768) Journal
    I think FF definitely deserves the #1 slot.A lot of people would argue that IE runs better or Opera is a better browser.Yes , Firefox crashes.Yes, it has bugs.Yes, it sometimes uses huge amounts of memory.BUT so does every other peice of software ever written.It just doesnt have to do with the firefox itself but also the user environment like the operating system,the kind of hardware,buggy systems themselves etc.These are not ALWAYS the reasons for crashes and slowdowns but most of the time they are.

    And I think what most people miss while comparing Firefox to Opera or IE is that Firefox is a much younger project than the others.Opera has been around for a number of years and has only just started to add better features.IE has always been around since there have been webbrowsers..So if you equate the amount of time these products have been in the market and the innovation/features they have been able to produce...Firefox wins hands down.Given a little time more, I dont think there will be any comparison to it.
    All this without considering the financial aspects of software development(IE & Opera are commericial FOR PROFIT projects).

    • Firefox deserves #1? (Score:3, Informative)

      by hkmwbz ( 531650 )
      Maybe, but your post certainly doesn't support that remark.

      "Yes, it has bugs.Yes, it sometimes uses huge amounts of memory.BUT so does every other peice of software ever written."

      So because other programs are buggy that excuses Firefox's bugginess, and it deserves to be #1 even if it is just as bad as other programs when it comes to crashing and gobbling up memory? Strange logic.

      "And I think what most people miss while comparing Firefox to Opera or IE is that Firefox is a much younger project than

    • "Opera has been around for a number of years and has only just started to add better features."

      Why does this post get marked as 'interesting'? There's no denying that Firefox' extension system is doing wonders for keeping the browser lean and still offering lots of (potential) functionality. But when manu of the extensions you can download are available by default in Opera (often Opera is the inspiration for the extension to begin with) it is hard to maintain that Opera didn't innovate in the past decade.

    • Opera has been around for a number of years and has only just started to add better features.

      HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. And this at +5? Come on guys, this deserves a -1, Troll. Seriously. Why do you think people have preferred adware or paying for Opera over sticking with IE? Why do you think Opera has survive the dark ages when IE was at 95% and lots of sites were IE-specific? Opera has been providing a much better browser than IE for years. Firefox has copied all the good stuff Opera has innovated and managed to br

  • Google's response (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jesser ( 77961 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:43AM (#14172882) Homepage Journal
    From 7 things the Gmail Team is thankful for this year:
    * Winning the "PC World World Class Award" for being #2 [pcworld.com] on the list of The 100 Best Products of 2005 [pcworld.com]. (We don't mind being #2, especially to Firefox. Plus, it gives us more to work for.)
    (The list [google.com] appeared on the main page of mail.google.com on Thanksgiving 2005.)
    • * Winning the "PC World World Class Award" for being #2 on the list of The 100 Best Products of 2005. (We don't mind being #2, especially to Firefox. Plus, it gives us more to work for.)

      Based on opinions and webmail competition in July 2004.

      Not that it may have changed for Gmail in particular, but with the quickly evolving web service market, this article should be taken with a huge grain of salt. There are even factual inaccuracies in the list due to how some products have evolved, and their ratings have b

  • A short rant. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MoogMan ( 442253 )
    I'm sorry to say that Firefox isn't really all that good. I started using it years back (firebird 0.8), and thought it was great - much better than IE, and much better than Galeon at the time. Mozilla was too sluggish for me, so I thought Firefox was The Answer(tm).

    Five years or so down the line, I've grown to almost hate it. It's still the memory hog it once was. It basically freezes up on pages that display lots of images/flash, which really is unacceptable.

    So I've moved back to Opera (again!). My vote fo
  • I know PC World is a rag, best used as toilet paper, but come on.

    The Treo 650 made the top ten?! I've known a few people who have had them (myself included) and it crashed more then Windows 95 on a bad day. I never used the 600, but the 650 is a POS.

    Seriously, iPod Photo makes the list, but the Nano doesn't? Does anyone really think that GMAIL is the second best product of the year, lol.

    But my favorite one is, ready for this, its number 33, "The New York Times on the Web". LOL, what a rag.
  • Opera: Best for power users who keep many pages open at once and perform frequent downloads. There's an e-mail program included, but banner ads on the free version of the browser are annoying.

    This was a mighty confusing (and simply incorrect) thing to say to me, until I noticed it was said a year ago.

    Ummm...

    So this is rather "Predictions of Best Products of 2005"?

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