Impressive growth, though RIM’s still got a way to go before it catches up with its rivals. Opera continues to hold the top spot with a share of 25.4 percent, followed by Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone at 20.8 percent, Nokia’s (NOK) 19.3 percent and 14 percent for the iPod touch. Note as well that Android continues to flat-line, though presumably that will change with the release of new devices using the OS.

The European Commission claims that Microsoft’s practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows violates European competition laws, so the company strips IE out of European versions of Windows 7. Now the Commission can’t argue that Microsoft’s behavior distorts fair competition in the browser market because, well, there’s no browser.

And if there’s no browser, there’s no need for the “must carry” provision the EC is mulling, which would require Microsoft (MSFT) to ship Windows 7 with a choice of browsers, rather than with IE alone.

And if there’s no “must carry” provision, Microsoft’s rivals in the browser market must continue to bear the costs of their own advertising and distribution (I’m talking to you, Opera). They can’t piggyback on Windows as the provision would have allowed.

And if there are no browsers whatsoever bundled with Windows 7, the European Commission’s constituents are going to be very unhappy. Because they’ll be paying full price for a defeatured version of Windows 7. Microsoft can call it Windows 7: FeU Edition and it can launch with a splash screen that says “Due to the limitations imposed upon Microsoft by the European Commission, this version of Windows does not include a Web browser or media player. It does, however, include the e-mail address of European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes with whom Microsoft encourages you to voice your displeasure.”

And make no mistake, they will be buying Windows. And in the end, that’s what’s important, right? A Windows user browsing the Web with Opera or Firefox is still a Windows user. And hey, they may soon be a Bing user as well.

Well played, Microsoft.

No wonder the EC is already wrinkling its nose at the move. “The Commission will shortly decide in the pending browser tying antitrust case whether or not Microsoft’s conduct from 1996 to date has been abusive and, if so, what remedy would be necessary to create genuine consumer choice and address the anticompetitive effects of Microsoft’s longstanding conduct,” the EC said in a statement issued late Thursday. “In terms of potential remedies if the Commission were to find that Microsoft had committed an abuse, the Commission has suggested that consumers should be offered a choice of browser, not that Windows should be supplied without a browser at all….As for retail sales, which amount to less than 5 percent of total sales, the Commission had suggested to Microsoft that consumers be provided with a choice of web browsers. Instead Microsoft has apparently decided to supply retail consumers with a version of Windows without a web browser at all. Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less.”

Perhaps. But Microsoft’s obligation isn’t to provide more choice. It’s to refrain from restricting it, which is exactly what the EC demanded and exactly what Microsoft is doing here. Sadly for Redmond, it’s likely too little, too late. The tone of the EC’s response and its mention of “Microsoft’s longstanding conduct” clearly suggest that the agency continues to mull corrective action. So in the the end this may be all for naught. But you can’t say that Microsoft didn’t attempt to “restore genuine consumer choice and enable competition on its merits,” as the EC has called upon it to do. It just didn’t take on the costs of advertising and distributing the browsers of its rivals. And, honestly, who can blame it?

Microsoft and the European Commission have canceled a face-to-face hearing in an antitrust case pending against the company over a scheduling dispute, of all things. Seems Microsoft is unhappy with the date of the hearing, which it says falls during a time when key senior regulators will be unable to attend. “The dates the Commission selected for our hearing, June 3-5, coincide with the most important worldwide intergovernmental competition law meeting, the International Competition Network meeting,” Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “As a result, it appears that many of the most influential Commission and national competition officials with the greatest interest in our case will be in Zurich and so unable to attend our hearing in Brussels.”

Microsoft (MSFT) asked the EC to reschedule. It refused, claiming June 3-5 are the only dates that a suitable room is available in Brussels for a hearing. Which is, of course, ridiculous. But no more so than Microsoft’s argument that the hearing will suffer from the absence of European decision-makers, says Thomas Vinje, counsel for Opera, a complainant in the case. Because, in all likelihood, those folks wouldn’t have attended anyway. “Such people simply don’t attend such hearings, and Microsoft knows it,” Vinje told the Financial Times. “The undoubted truth must simply be that Microsoft is afraid of facing the questions and evidence it would face from the Commission and from those aligned against it.”

Among the browser’s new features: an Opera-like Top Sites, which displays a mosaic of frequently visited pages; a Cover Flow visualization of browsing history that allows users to peruse previously viewed Web sites as they would albums in iTunes; improved tabbed browsing; Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any Web site without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text; and improved Windows integration that gives Safari a native look when its running on XP or Vista. Safari 4 is also Acid3-compliant, which means it has passed the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 Browser Test.

Notably absent from Safari 4′s new features list: further security enhancements, something that rival browsers have been quite focused on as of late and which Safari could clearly use.

I have Firefox on my home laptop, but Internet Explorer on my office laptop. Can I transfer my Firefox bookmarks on my home computer to IE on my office computer using the Foxmarks bookmark-synchronization service you recommended? And how would I go about doing it?

Yes. You start by uploading your bookmarks from Firefox at home to your Foxmarks Web account, using the Firefox version of Foxmarks. That will establish the bookmark collection on the Web site as identical to your Firefox collection. Then, you install the IE version of Foxmarks on your office computer, and, when it prompts you to sync, you can either merge the Web-based bookmarks you previously uploaded from Firefox with the ones already on IE, or choose the option to overwrite the IE bookmarks entirely with the ones online.

Does the Foxmarks service work with AOL’s browser bookmarks?

AOL’s browser is not supported. Neither are some other browsers, such as Opera or Google’s Chrome. Foxmarks currently comes in versions only for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (Mac version only). The Firefox version also works with Flock, which is a browser heavily based on Firefox.

Do you have any idea what the realistic hardware requirements will be to run Windows 7?

Microsoft hasn’t announced these yet. But the requirements for the current beta version are likely to be similar to those for the final release. The beta hardware requirements are: a 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor; 1 GB of system memory; 16 GB of available disk space; support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory available for graphics; and a DVD-R/W Drive.

In the past, Microsoft’s minimum requirements have tended to understate what’s needed to run Windows well, even when doing typical tasks. It’s too early to say if this will be true of Windows 7. But I can say that, in my testing so far, the beta of Windows 7 runs much more quickly and smoothly than Vista on the same hardware.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

If I buy a PC with an AMD processor instead of an Intel one, will I run into any compatibility issues with common software like Vista or Office 2007?

No, as long as the AMD processor, and/or its accompanying graphics and other chips, called a “chip set,” are rated as being able to handle the graphics in the version of Vista you are buying. Each chip company makes some low-end models that handle certain tasks more slowly than their mainstream or top-of-line models. And gamers are often particular about which chip sets they buy. But, in my experience, roughly comparable AMD and Intel processors and chip sets are equally compatible with common software like Office and Windows.

I have been using the Netscape Web browser for years. I am interested in shifting to using the Firefox browser. How do I transfer my extensive list of book marks from Netscape to Firefox?

Firefox will import your Netscape bookmarks automatically during the installation process, just as it can automatically import bookmarks from other browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.

Friends who use Macs tell me they have a removable backup device that backs up their entire hard drive, including programs. Is there something similar for PCs?

You appear to be referring to Time Capsule, which is an Apple hardware product that combines a hard disk and a wireless base station and is meant to work with the Mac’s built-in Time Machine automated backup feature. The answer is that there are many backup drives for Windows PCs, and that lots of them work with Macs as well. All the major hard-disk makers sell external hard disks that connect to a PC either directly, or over a network, and which come with relatively simple backup programs. Some of these programs will do complete, automated backups of everything on your PC, including applications. Even Apple’s Time Capsule can be used to back up files from Windows PCs, though it doesn’t come with Windows backup software, and setting it up for Windows is slightly trickier than doing so on a Mac.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns online free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

One welcome sign is an effort by companies trying to improve Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile operating system, which has a reputation for confusing navigation and hasn’t had a major update recently. Kinoma Inc., for example, recently released an application called Kinoma Play that runs on Windows Mobile devices and gives users a markedly better way of handling photos, videos, music and Web browsing.

The HTC Touch Diamond, due out this month from Sprint, tries to hide Windows Mobile software.

This week, I tried yet another software program that is designed to run on top of Windows Mobile software. But this time, the software is at the heart of a device designed by the same company: HTC Inc. I tested the HTC Touch Diamond, due out from Sprint (S) sometime this month for $250 (after a $100 mail-in rebate) with a two-year contract.

Taiwan-based HTC started out in 1998 as a maker and designer of mobile devices for other companies. A year ago, HTC launched the first device under its own name in the U.S., and now, Sprint, AT&T (T) and T-Mobile (DT) sell HTC-branded devices. The Diamond incorporates HTC software, as well as software from Sprint, MobiTV, TeleNav and others. But it isn’t a stretch to imagine HTC trying to create a fully end-to-end model (hardware and all software) in the future.

The Diamond has a touch screen, but it’s smaller than Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone — 2.8 versus 3.5 inches. This screen lacks the iPhone’s multitouch functionality, and its smaller size robs space used for touch gestures like flicking or scrolling with a finger. Yet like the iPhone, it relies solely on an on-screen keyboard for all text entries. Even with the Diamond’s stylus, the keyboard felt small and cramped. Using just your fingertips was next to impossible.

After using the Diamond for a week, I can say that despite its handsome TouchFLO 3D software and animated icons like photos that flip from one to the next with a flick of finger, this device failed to disguise the frustrating interface of Windows Mobile often enough for my taste.

It reminded me of the brown paper bag book covers my Dad helped me make for schoolbooks when I was a kid: They looked great on the outside, felt sturdy and clean and created a blank canvas for homemade doodles that were often more interesting to me than the books they covered. But my book covers couldn’t change what was underneath; pages of frustrating algebra were just a flip away.

HTC’s sleek software tries to hide Windows Mobile, but menus from the Microsoft operating system are constantly popping up. HTC’s email program, for example, is represented by an animated envelope icon that, when selected, cleverly flips twice before sliding an email message half-way out and giving you a three-line peek at what’s inside. If only reading and responding to email were half as entertaining. Selecting the animated envelope opens the old, cumbersome Windows Mobile email program.

Also, the touch capabilities of the Diamond’s screen didn’t work as well as they should. Finger flicks that should have scrolled through lists instead seemed to select individual items in a list, as if they were sticky.

The Diamond isn’t all bad, of course. Plenty of people will like its smaller size because the iPhone and RIM’s (RIM) BlackBerrys seem too large and brick-like to hold up to an ear for phone calls. Next to my BlackBerry Curve, the Diamond was of comparable thickness but measured smaller in width and length.

Despite its size, the Diamond is packed with features. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus that doubles as a camcorder, and comes with four gigabytes of internal memory and a removable battery. I taped short videos — something the iPhone can’t do — and found the sound and video footage to be adequate.

HTC touts the Diamond’s browser, which is based on the Opera browsing engine but is designed for HTC. It opens Web pages in views that fit the screen and text is automatically resized as users zoom in or out, though this resizing was sometimes slow.

Unlike the iPhone, Web sites that are opened on the Diamond’s browser don’t resemble the actual site as you would see it on your computer. I opened CNN.com (TWX) and WSJ.com (NWS), two sites that are packed with text and graphics on a regular browser. On the Diamond, they quickly were rendered in list format with mostly text-only. I easily touched the screen to follow links to full stories.

Like the iPhone, the Diamond has an accelerometer, though it’s called the “G-Sensor.” When it worked, this feature flipped the screen to match the horizontal or vertical direction in which the device was being held. Photos flipped instantly, but the Diamond’s G-Sensor took almost three full seconds to respond as I flipped from vertical to horizontal while using the browser. And some Web sites didn’t respond to the G-Sensor flips at all.

A special YouTube application developed by HTC was easy to find on the device and worked quickly. My videos were organized into categories for All, History, Bookmarks and Search, though this last category required using the finger-fumbling keyboard. In one step, I emailed a link from a YouTube video to a friend using the device, with a still shot from the video included in the message.

Overall navigation on the Diamond isn’t as intuitive as on the iPhone or iPod Touch, nor was it as easy as on a touch-screen Windows Mobile device running the Kinoma Play application. The iPhone and iPod Touch use quick double-taps on touch screens to zoom in or out, and multitouch capabilities resize images with pinching gestures; Kinoma Play uses a long touch to zoom in. The Diamond used double tapping on some screens, but not enough for me to grow comfortably reliant on it. A small, circular pad beneath the device’s touch screen provided a more dependable method for zooming in or out of screens: tracing the perimeter of this circle clockwise with a finger zoomed in; counterclockwise zoomed out.

The HTC’s software animation is put to good use on its Weather screen. Here, animated illustrations of each day’s weather appear on the screen: suns spin, clouds move in, rain appears to fall. Even moons appear on the device at night to accurately reflect the weather in a city at a specific time.

It is exciting to think about other mobile-phone companies giving better software a real try, especially those that attempt to improve Windows Mobile. But HTC’s Touch Diamond doesn’t hide the outdated operating system well enough or often enough for a user to want to buy a whole new mobile device.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

In the interest of public safety, of course. Among those browsers, older versions of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer and Firefox and, presumably, all versions of Apple’s (AAPL) Safari browser that PayPal recently cautioned users against. “Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do to protect their customers,” Barrett said this past February. “Our recommendation at this point, to our customers, is use Internet Explorer 7 or 8 when it comes out or Firefox 2 or Firefox 3, or indeed Opera.”

UPDATE: PayPal now says it never planned to block Safari.

PayPal is developing features to block customers from logging in to PayPal when using obsolete browsers on outdated or unsupported operating systems. An example of such a browser/OS combination might be, for example, Internet Explorer 4 running on Windows 98. In doing so, we better protect our customers from viewing a phishing site through their browser. We have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, including Apple’s Safari, from our Web site.”

So to recap:

• PayPal Chief Information Security Officer Michael Barrett warns against using Safari.

• PayPal publishes a paper, authored by Barrett, saying the company will soon protect users against unsafe browsers that lack phishing protections like blacklists, anti-fraud warning pages and Extended Validation SSL Certificates.
• Safari lacks these protections.
• PayPal says: Go ahead and use Safari. We have absolutely no intention of blocking it. But God forbid, don’t use IE4 on Windows 98.

Know what IE4′s share of the browser market was in 2007?

0.01%.

I’d imagine its share of the market on Windows 98 machines in 2008 is quite a bit less than that. You might as well warn against using IE4 on MS-DOS.

In tacit acknowledgment of IE’s shortcomings, Microsoft is currently mounting a crash effort to update the browser with something called Internet Explorer 7.

But it’s not ready yet. In the meantime, there are a handful of alternative browsers you can use every day instead of IE, on both Windows PCs and Macs — all of them superior to the current version of IE.

One caveat: Some Web sites, especially in the financial industry, have been constructed using proprietary features unique to Internet Explorer. Other browsers mainly stick to industry-standard features, meaning they can’t reproduce every component of these IE-oriented sites. It’s as if NBC decided to produce programming that would work properly only on, say, Sony TV sets. So the bottom line is this: If you are constantly using one of these nonstandard sites, you should continue using Internet Explorer, or at least keep it around for backup.

The best-known alternative to IE is Firefox, made by nonprofit Mozilla. Firefox is issued in nearly identical versions for Windows, Macintosh and the techie-oriented Linux operating system. By contrast, IE runs only on Windows. (Microsoft once made a Mac version of IE, but has discontinued it.) Another excellent choice is Safari, the browser by Apple that comes on every Mac, but has no versions for Windows or Linux. Opera, which comes in Windows, Mac and Linux versions, is also a fine alternative. One more option worth considering is the Windows-only Netscape browser.

These four options share two major characteristics. First, they’re generally more secure than IE. Theoretically, any browser can be attacked and used as a conduit for malicious software that can hobble your computer. Firefox, for example, has been forced to close numerous potential security holes. But IE is the least secure, for several reasons: It was designed in an era when security was less of a concern. Its very ubiquity makes it the favorite target of online criminals. And it uses a Microsoft-only technology called ActiveX that helps Web sites work better, but also allows malicious software to control aspects of the computer. The browsers mentioned above don’t use ActiveX, which is one reason they’re more secure, but it also helps account for their difficulty in handling some IE-oriented Web sites.

The second thing these alternatives have in common is tabbed browsing — the most important advance in browsers in years. This feature lets you open multiple Web sites simultaneously in the same window. Only one page is visible at a time, but the others are live and open behind it. Each is marked by a tab, like those found on paper file folders. To switch from the page you’re viewing to another, you click on a tab. You can also close any page without affecting the others, and if you follow a link on a tabbed page, it usually opens within the same tab. The real power of tabbed browsing comes in when you collect bookmarks (what IE calls “Favorites”) into folders. You can then click just once to open all the bookmarks in a given folder, each under its own tab. For instance, I have roughly 20 technology bookmarks in a folder, and I like to open them all at once in Firefox or Safari, the two browsers I use the most.

Why would you want to use a tabbed browser? First, it saves time. Second, it allows you to easily scan and compare related Web sites. Third, you can open a link in a new tab while keeping the original page open so you can easily return to it. All in all, I can’t imagine going back to Internet Explorer after using a tabbed browser. IE does allow you to open multiple Web pages, but only one at a time and in separate windows, which clog up your desktop and the Windows taskbar. That’s why even Microsoft recognizes the superiority of tabbed browsing and is building it into IE 7. (Note: Microsoft’s MSN online service currently offers an add-on that can bolt a simple version of tabbed browsing onto the current version of IE.)

Another feature the alternatives share, but IE lacks, is a built-in search box that appears right in the toolbar of the browser. This lets you perform a search without using an add-on toolbar or navigating to the home page of the search service.

If all the alternative browsers feature tabbed browsing, built-in search boxes and better security than IE, what are their pluses and minuses? Here’s a quick rundown of the three frontrunners.

– Firefox. This most popular alternative to IE is “open source,” meaning it’s open to improvement by any programmer anywhere. Thus, thousands of add-on features are available by installing free small software modules called “extensions,” which let you do things like download all links on a page with a single click or automatically fill out online forms; there’s even one that lets you view a Web page in IE. Firefox also offers a two-click method for clearing your browsing history and other evidence of where you’ve been online. Finally, its built-in search can be customized to use any popular search engine. That said, Firefox does have some rough edges. Closing tabs with the mouse is awkward the way it’s set up, and the command for viewing your history is illogically placed on the “Go” menu.

– Safari. This Apple browser includes an excellent built-in reader for so-called “news feeds” — summaries of blogs and news sites. It has a “private browsing” mode, which leaves no trace of where you’ve been online, and offers parental controls. It also does a great job of e-mailing entire Web pages, and it can save pages as PDF files, viewable on any computer. But Safari works exclusively on Macs, and its search box works only with Google.

– Opera. This long-established browser is loaded with features, including an excellent zooming capability, and if you have lots of tabs open, Opera can display them on multiple lines so you can more easily read their titles. But while Opera likes to claim it’s “the Fastest Browser on Earth,” in my tests it hasn’t proved itself swifter than Firefox.

You could download any one of these browsers for free today and be on your way to a better Web experience. Or you could wait for IE 7, which is likely to appear in the fall. It promises tabbed browsing, a built-in search box and a bunch of security improvements-that is, everything its rivals already offer.

If you have a question, send it to me at mossberg@wsj.com, and I may select it to be answered here in Mossberg’s Mailbox.

In last week’s column, you covered Web browsers that featured tabbed browsing and the ability to read syndicated news feeds. But you omitted the Opera browser, which has had these features for awhile. Why did you leave out Opera? Do you hate it?

Not at all. It was mainly a space issue — I didn’t have room in the column to delve into every browser. Opera, which runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux, is a very good, speedy, full-featured Web browser that pioneered many of the key features of newer browsers like Firefox and Safari.

In the past, I have felt that Opera suffered from an overly complicated user interface, and that it was aimed more at techies and tinkerers than at the mainstream, nontechie users who are my main audience. But the latest version, Opera 8 — available for Windows and Linux and coming soon for the Mac — has a much cleaner look and feel and hides most of the options that might overwhelm average users. The new version also features a security-notification system that helps users judge whether a financial site is genuine or a possible scam; and an impressive ability to resize Web pages to fit screens of almost any size without scrambling the page layout.

In my limited tests, Opera 8 looks very good. The only downside of Opera is that, unlike Firefox, it isn’t exactly free. There is a no-charge version, but it displays ads in its toolbar. To get a version without ads, you have to pay $39.

I have pictures taken with a three- and four-megapixel camera. How do I easily email them without having to reduce the size of each picture?

In Windows XP, just go to the folder where the picture files are stored and select the ones you want to email. Then, either click on “E-mail the selected items” from the command list on the left of the window, or the “Send To” command on the File menu at the top of the window, or on the menu that pops up when you right-click on the file icons. You will be given a choice of making the pictures smaller, or emailing them at their original size.

On the Macintosh, the easiest way to do this is in the iPhoto program, which comes with every Mac. You just select the pictures you want to email, click the Email icon, and the program will give you a choice of sending the picture at its original size, or at a variety of smaller sizes.

I am trying to decide between purchasing an IBM ThinkPad and an Apple PowerBook. In order to do a realistic price comparison, I am wondering if there is a suite of music, photo and video editing software, on par with Apple’s iLife suite, that you would recommend for the ThinkPad.

I don’t know of a multimedia suite for Windows (handling photos, music, videos and DVD authoring) that is anywhere near as well integrated and easy to use as the iLife suite that Apple includes with all new Macs. There are individual programs, some of them free, that do parts of the job, such as Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Album for photos. But, in a complete suite, the closest candidate on Windows is probably Roxio Easy Media Creator, which sells for about $85.

Why isn’t there an “RSS” news feed that would allow users to read summaries of your columns in news reader software?

There is such a feed of my three weekly columns, as well as feeds for other articles from The Wall Street Journal. All use the RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, system and can be viewed from most news-reader programs and Web browsers that support the RSS standard.

In addition to the feed for my columns, there are feeds available for Journal news and business headlines, the paper’s editorials and its technology stories. These feeds of headlines and story summaries are available free to anyone, but the actual stories behind them are viewable only by readers who have a paid subscription. There is one exception: a news feed for a selection of free stories made available each day.

To get the Journal’s RSS feeds, go to wsj.com, and click on the entry called “RSS Feeds” toward the bottom of the menu at the left of the home page. Or, to get the feed for my column, just paste the following address into a news reader or RSS-capable Web browser: online.wsj.com/xml/rss/0,, 3_7071,00.xml. To get the feed for each day’s free stories, paste in this address: online.wsj.com/xml/rss/0,,3_7077,00.xml.

* * *

Because of the volume of e-mail I receive, I can’t routinely answer individual questions by e-mail, or consult on individual problems or purchasing decisions. I read all questions I receive and select three each week to answer in the column.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com