Which of the following scenarios has regulators in Europe issuing hundreds of millions in new fines this week?

1) Google has released a laptop that consists of nothing more than its browser, thereby severely foreclosing opportunities for competition on any number of fronts.

2) Apple, which for years wouldn’t allow iOS apps to compete with its built-in programs, still won’t allow access to its fastest browsing engine, forcing rivals to use slower technology.

3) Microsoft, which used to have a dominant browser and operating system but has been losing share for years, has failed to live up to the terms of a deal over that fading monopoly.

If you guessed No. 3, you might have a job waiting for you at the European Commission.

While everyone else has turned their attention to mobile — an area where Microsoft trails badly — European regulators have remained doggedly focused on making sure consumers have plenty of choice of browsers when they bother to boot up their desktop.

The issue seemed passe when the EU revisited it back in 2009 and seems all the more so four years later.

Windows and Internet Explorer have continued to lose share over those four years on the desktop itself, and the real growth in the Internet is from billions of mobile devices.

To be fair, Microsoft did agree to offer European consumers the option of a ballot to choose which browser they wanted. Even Redmond admits it made a mistake.

“We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We provided the (European) Commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake — or anything similar — in the future.”

But, at this point, might regulators want to turn their attention elsewhere?

Consumers certainly have. Even RealNetworks, Opera and the other outfits that initially complained about Windows have, too.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Skyfire has software that allows carriers to deliver optimized video and other content to mobile devices. Skyfire said three large U.S. operators are using its technology, and 10 operators around the world are in trials.

“Opera and Skyfire are a natural fit,” Opera CEO Lars Boilesen said in a statement. “Both companies have evolved far beyond their browser roots. Skyfire adds capabilities to our portfolio around video, app optimization, smartphones and tablets, and strength in North America.”

The cash-and-stock deal calls for Skyfire to get an upfront $50 million payment, with performance-based clauses over three years that could eventually make the deal worth $155 million.

Once the deal closes, which is expected to happen by the middle of next month, Skyfire CEO Jeffrey Glueck will become an executive VP at Opera, overseeing its dealings with carriers while retaining his role as head of Skyfire, which will be a wholly owned subsidiary and continue to develop its Skyfire browser.

It’s nothing like your grandpa’s Safari. RockMelt for iPad caters to the shifting attitudes we have in the way we experience content on tablets. The result is an attractive mish-mash of an interface design that borrows heavily from Facebook’s Timeline, Pinterest’s tiles and Twitter’s ever-flowing stream.

As CEO Eric Vishria puts it: “It is unquestionably a really different beast. And that is a good thing.”

Philosophically, RockMelt as a product builds on top of the two predominant schools of thought in how we browse the Web today. Google champions intent-based search — type in a word, receive endless pages of links. Social surfing, the other school, posits that our friends are better referrers of new content than any algorithm. While still nascent, the meteoric rise of Facebook and Twitter, and their ability to deliver massive traffic around the Web, give the theory legs.

RockMelt exists somewhere in the space between the two. First launched in 2010, it’s a browser like Chrome or Firefox but with deeply integrated social features. Navigating the Web, the idea goes, shouldn’t rely on either philosophy entirely, but incorporate the best of both worlds.

As browsing has changed over the past two years, we’ve shifted on other fronts as well. We’re moving from desktops to smartphones. From text to visuals, from the static to the stream.

Confused? Here’s an example: Don’t expect a browser window defined by the blank search bar up top. Open the app and integrate it with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and you’re presented with a never-ending stream of squares and rectangles of different stories, populated by the people you’re connected to. It’s sort of like a portal site, only it is one curated by the folks whose views you (presumably) care about.

The reasoning here: First, the mobile browser market is clogged with competitors. Dolphin, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, Chrome — each one offers similar functionality, comes in a similar layout, all battling for the same slice of the mobile browser marketshare. RockMelt’s drastically different appearance, according to co-founder (and ex-Netscape veep) Tim Howes, makes it stand out among its contemporaries.

Second, consider the medium. We don’t use tablets in the same manner as we do our desktops. IPads are seen primarily as consumption-first devices, amenable to displaying products and content in easily swipe-able, fast-scrolling ways. There’s a reason sites like Fab.com and The Fancy have such high rates of purchasing through tablets.

So RockMelt for iPad takes our habit and works with it, presenting stories in pop-out panes that make content look more attractive.

“The thing about the Web is that it’s vast,” Vishria told me. “But it’s dirty.” RockMelt tries to solve the problem, as Vishria puts it, of combining the expansive nature of the Web with the beauty and richness of an app. Hence the new presentation.

Third, there’s the social component. Along with Facebook and Twitter integration, RockMelt builds another social layer into the browser itself. You can follow others who use the application, and the app will suggest more stories to you based on what they’re sharing. Moreover, you’re able to comment, share and add an array of “Like”-type emotions to each article (sort of like Buzzfeed’s “LOL” or “WTF” subcategories). The idea here is, not only will content circulate externally via Facebook and Twitter sharing, but internally via RockMelt’s additional social layer.

I’ve played with the application for the past two weeks, using it both with and without some of the social components. I’ll say this: It is attractive. It is fast. And to be frank, the initial feeling was jarring. When I imagine using a browser, I expect to experience the Web in a certain way, navigating my usual haunts via search bar, going to Facebook or Twitter only on occasion.

With RockMelt’s app, I feel like I’m browsing shelves in a store. I haven’t decided quite yet if that’s a good thing or bad thing.

Is this something I could come back to repeatedly? Is this too much of a shock to the system that I’m used to, the standby of the white search bar, the blank page?

Vishria believes that the process of discovery — the neat, pretty way content is wrapped up in little packages and presented to the user — will be what draws us in. Browsing and exploration will be what keeps us there. And to be fair, the search bar is still there — it’s just not the focal point.

Obviously the jury’s out on this — at least until the app has been in the wild for a few months or so.

To get a better sense of the product, check out RockMelt’s commercial below (complete with Honey Badger commentary).

Wajam overlays check-ins and posts from friends on Google Maps so searchers can see them in context.

With Wajam installed on iOS, users will be able to see their friends’ location-tagged Facebook and Twitter status when they search on Google Maps, and will have a new Google search tab in Safari dedicated to content from friends.

Huhwhat? How is Wajam inserting itself into other iOS apps — much less Apple’s precious default apps?

Well, the company is basically asking users to configure their systems so Wajam is a proxy for all their Internet traffic.

(Users can get instructions on how to set up Wajam as a “Profile” by going to Wajam.com from their iPhones. There’s no Wajam app; this is deep in the phone settings.)

This is not a totally new trick. The popular Onavo app, which compresses data so users can save and monitor it, also makes use of the profile configuration. And browsers like Opera and UC Browser also function by using proxies. But it’s somewhat novel for overlaying content onto existing apps.

You can also see that Wajam doesn’t have this down flawlessly — in Google Maps, above, each Wajam result is labeled as a “sponsored link” rather than a regular location pin.

Wajam is installed — by those who dare! — as an iOS settings profile, so that Internet activity can be scanned for relevant friend results.

But Wajam for iPhone is almost more of a demo of what could be than a tool many people will feel comfortable using.

“If Facebook, Google and Apple were friends, you would probably have the best phone out there, and the best possible experience, and we’re trying to show what that could look like,” Wajam CEO Martin-Luc Archambault said in an interview this week.

Montreal-based Wajam has historically made a browser plugin that overlays social search results onto users’ regular searches. Social search is one of the most contentious areas of the Web, because of all the competitive animosity between Google, Facebook, Twitter and anyone else who gets big.

Life as a browser plugin is tricky because, by design, Wajam messes with users’ existing interfaces. The advantage is, once they have Wajam installed, they can go about their regular business on Web sites like Google and Amazon, and see Facebook, Twitter and Google+ posts from their friends.

This “Friends” tab in Google on Safari for iOS is inserted by Wajam.

This is exactly what Wajam is trying to do on iOS — first for Safari and Google Maps, later for Apple’s own maps in iOS 6 and all sorts of other third-party apps.

Archambault maintains that Wajam won’t slow down users’ phone experiences, because he is relying on super-speedy Amazon infrastructure, and that everything will be private, because Wajam is TRUSTe certified. It remains to be seen how Apple reacts to the hack, given it could be abused.

Archambault would like to insert Wajam social search results onto apps from services like TripAdvisor, for example. This would be smarter than TripAdvisor’s existing social integration with Facebook, he said, because it is more extensive and uses techniques like natural language processing to find tweeted locations.

“Our goal is not to break the user’s experience,” Archambault said. (Well, that’s a good starting point!)

He added that if overlays within apps become too annoying, Wajam could potentially listen for relevant searches and send push notifications rather than injecting information into an app.

This Wajam-produced video shows what social results look like on the iPhone:

UC’s next target is the U.S., where the company released localized Android and iOS versions this past week, and plans to open up a Silicon Valley office later this year. (It has already made inroads into India, where it has 20 percent share and is close to knocking off market leader Opera, execs said.)

UCWeb's Roy Rong and Yu Yongfu visit AllThingsD.

UC Browser is more than a just dumb container for Web sites; in China, the browser includes its own virtual currency accounts, identity system, social network and navigation services. In a way, it’s more like a mobile-only Facebook platform than the pure Chrome or Safari browsers.

Plus, UC browser is quite fast, because the company maintains local data centers from where it compresses Web sites and sends them to phones. Opera Mini and Amazon’s Kindle Fire Silk browser use similar techniques.

Bridging to the U.S. market won’t necessarily be easy, but UC’s design and experience across the spectrum of low- to high-end phones could be instructive.

CEO Yu Yongfu — who’s on a grand tour of Silicon Valley this week — emphasized that while his company started doing all this in 2004, the U.S. smartphone market only launched with the iPhone in 2007.

And beyond that three-year lead, China is supposed to oust the U.S. as the world’s biggest smartphone market this year.

Yu said he thinks he understands how to deal with the limitations of mobile — small screen size, reduced bandwidth, limited input, short battery life and some eight different operating systems — better than just about anyone.

Still, it’s not clear that the pillars of the UC Web strategy — compressing sites to speed up page loads, and bundling in services and shortcuts — will go over well in the U.S. smartphone market, where we have tended to like our browsers to just show Web pages for us, while leaving heavier lifting to dedicated apps.

UC Browser has 200 million active monthly users, with 50 million of them on Android and the rest spread across other platforms. It gets about a quarter of its users from deals to be preinstalled on phones, said CFO Roy Rong.

The new U.S. version of UC Browser for iPhone

Like other browsers, UC receives revenue through search referral agreements (in China, the default is Baidu; in the U.S., it’s Google). The UC app also includes paid links, display ads, and virtual goods sold in the Flash games it licenses for users. It has its own “app store,” and helps users save bookmarks to HTML5 apps on its home screen. It’s almost like a mobile Web OS.

Rong and Yu said they couldn’t think of any examples of Chinese Internet companies with significant usage in the U.S., so they are hoping to blaze that trail.

To get things started, they rented data centers in Los Angeles and Dallas, signed an agreement to bundle Evernote in UC Browser to help it get distribution in China and vice versa (and plan to do so with other apps), and tweaked the browser’s interface to be more spacious and empty.

For whatever reason, people in China seem to prefer more clutter, Rong said.

Opera launched its mobile store in March, offering apps for BlackBerry, Android and Symbian, among other platforms.

“Opera is evolving from being a browser company into a fully integrated mobile services company and this acquisition is an important step in that direction,” Opera CEO Lars Boilesen said in a statement. Based in Northbrook, Illinois, Handster powers app stores for various carriers and device makers, including Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei and LG.

Asked what the deal might mean for Appia, an Opera representative told AllThingsD, “We will continue to work with Appia in a limited capacity, but long term, we will rely more on our own technology and team.”

An Appia representative did not immediately have a comment.

Update: Appia VP Dov Cohn said in a statement to AllThingsD that “Appia continues to power the Opera Mobile Store, and Opera remains one of several key partners of Appia’s that includes Vodacom, Zedge, Telcel and others.”

The company is announcing later Monday that it is integrating Facebook Connect into the latest version of its mobile Web store. GetJar is hoping that the move will help it stand out in an increasingly competitive field that includes the official Android market, Amazon’s app store and a host of smaller competitors.

“I don’t see the primary app stores really doing this for a while because they all see Facebook as a competitor,” GetJar director of mobile products Mario Tapia said in a recent interview.

Those that opt to log in with their Facebook account will be able to see what their friends are downloading and also post their activity to the social network.

Tapia expects such social cues will become an increasingly important factor for people as they try to decide which apps to download among tens of thousands of choices. Over time, Facebook referrals could become an even more important discovery mechanism than search, he said.

“Search in the future will not be the major lead generator,” Tapia said. “I think social graphs–social networks–will be overshadowing search when it comes to discovery of content.”

GetJar is also facing steep competition from not just its traditional adversaries–the official Apple and Android marketplaces–but also from a host of other rivals. All of these app stores are offering their own approach for solving the app discovery problem and looking to scoop up a chunk of the advertising dollars that app makers are willing to spend to get their programs noticed. To bulk up for that battle, GetJar raised an additional $25 million in funding earlier this year.

Most recently, GetJar was involved in a spat with browser maker Opera, which built an app store of its own into its mobile browser. GetJar initially pulled Opera from its store, but the browser has since returned to GetJar’s digital shelves, albeit in a version without the built-in app store.

Even those users that choose to connect with Facebook won’t have to share all their downloads with their friends, but they will have to remember to opt out of sharing that information–or face having to explain to a wife or husband why they downloaded Flirtomatic.

Tapia said the company had a lot of discussion on whether to make download sharing opt-in or opt-out.

“It’s not hidden,” he said. “I think people are going to be open to sharing as opposed to not.”

Update, 10:28 a.m.: I initially misspelled Tapia’s last name. It’s fixed now.

GetJar pulled the app last month after Opera built an app store of its own into the browser. At the time, GetJar said it couldn’t afford to help support someone that was going after its core business.

GetJar is one of many companies in the business of connecting mobile phone owners with the thousands of applications available for their device–a space that is growing increasingly competitive through the entry of new startups and big players, such as Amazon.

Opera joined the fray last month, building a store powered by one of those startups–Appia–into its browser. That prompted its delisting by GetJar.

However, GetJar said on Wednesday that Opera Mini was returning to the store.

“GetJar remains committed to offering consumers the best possible content regardless of category, phone or platform,” GetJar CMO Patrick Mork said in a statement. “Opera Mini has been a great partner and one of our top apps for many years and our users will be happy to have a bigger and better version of Opera Mini back in our store.”

Opera also said it was glad to be back.

“I’m glad that Opera Mini is back in the GetJar store,” Opera Executive VP Mahi de Silva said in a statement. “We believe Opera should be everywhere and we love the fact that our fans will now be able to download Opera Mini again from GetJar.”

What neither side highlighted (but both privately confirmed) is that the version of Opera Mini 6 available for free from GetJar lacks the direct link to the Opera Mobile Store that GetJar found so irksome.

An Opera representative said there was no money changing hands as part of Opera’s return.

“This week we had to take a very drastic and unusual step at GetJar: to remove one of our longtime favorite apps,” Chief Marketing Officer Patrick Mork said in a soon-to-be-posted blog entry. Mork said the move is “nearly unprecedented” for the company, but necessary given the head-to-head competition.

“The simple problem is that Opera Mini decided to include a competing app store in its browser,” Mork said.

“Although we don’t have any issue with this in principle, in practice it means that consumers might start using this app store instead of visiting GetJar to get their favorite apps,” he added. “This robs GetJar of traffic and therefore of the advertising necessary to keep our service free for the more then 25 million consumers that use GetJar.”

The move comes just after Opera built an app store of its own into its mobile Web browser and highlights the growing competition in the third-party app store business.

The nixing is so fresh that a Google search still pulls up Opera on GetJar’s site. However, loading the page results in a message that says, “The application you have requested does not exist on GetJar. Sorry for inconvenience.”

Opera said that the store will be available via a “speed dial” button on its own browser, which it says is installed on 100 million phones. The store should also work on rival browsers, though.

“The launch of the Opera Mobile Store supports Opera’s core belief in an open, cross-platform mobile Internet experience by providing Opera users with an integrated storefront of mobile applications,” Opera Executive Vice President Mahi de Silva said in a statement. The company has been testing the store and said that during February the store attracted 15 million users from 200 countries and provided more than 700,000 downloads per day.

The browser detects a user’s country and phone type, serving up apps of the appropriate flavor and offering information in the proper language and sales in the correct currency.

The company said its store will be able to offer free and paid apps for “virtually all” mobile platforms. However, Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 both require applications to be delivered directly through their storefronts, so perhaps there is a different meaning for “virtually all” in Norwegian.

Opera is just the latest company looking to get in on the app store trend. Just this morning, I looked at Mobilewalla, one of many startups in this area. Unlike Mobilewalla, Opera already has an in, given that its mobile browser is already installed on a considerable number of mobile phones. (Unlike on the desktop, where IE, Firefox and Chrome rule the roost, Opera has a significant presence on mobile devices.)

While new entrants are piling into the app store space, many of the native app stores have been working to expand their search abilities, while existing third party discovery engines, such as GetJar, are expanding into new areas.

Yesterday, BoomTown paid a long overdue visit on the Mountain View, Calif., HQ of Mozilla, the unusual public-private company that makes the Firefox browser, to chat with its (relatively) new CEO Gary Kovacs (pictured here).

There is a lot to talk about with the new exec, especially the near-to-official launch of Firefox 4, the increasing coopetition with Google and its Chrome efforts and where Mozilla goes next (mobile).

Kovacs, in fact, has a deep mobile background, having arrived in the late fall of 2010 to take over from John Lilly, who moved on to a stint as a venture capitalist.

Before Mozilla, Kovacs worked on a range of products at Sybase–until after its purchase by SAP–and also on mobile and devices at Adobe. Before that, he played a key role at Zi Corporation, a company specializing in embedded software and services for mobile and consumer devices.

He’ll need all that expertise if Firefox is to do as well on mobile devices as it has in gaining market share on the desktop, an effort that has been challenged by a continual and intense effort at upgrade and improvement by No. 3 Google especially.

According to a recent poll, for example, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer holds the dominant 56 percent share, with Mozilla’s Firefox at almost 23 percent and Google at just above 10 percent. Apple’s Safari and Opera follow.

Of course, Firefox has been playing nicer with Chrome cousin Android, which is beginning to dominate the smartphone market and is moving aggressively into the tablet arena. In fact, Mozilla just released a new beta in the marketplace for Google’s mobile operating system.

Still, some have fretted as Mozilla delayed its official release of Firefox 4 several times since last fall.

Nonetheless, by dislodging IE from its dominant market position, Firefox has proved not only that open-source projects can provide better software, but that it’s possible for a particularly well done one to become an everyday consumer application.

Despite its success, Mozilla still has to keep up its innovation and technical prowess. But given its unusual status as both a profit and nonprofit, it is hindered in that it is not likely to go public and shower its Silicon Valley employees with giant gobs of overhyped stock.

In the video below, Kovacs talks about Mozilla’s relationship with Google (not easy!), feature improvements in Firefox 4 (a new Chromish user interface!), how to hold onto talent in Silicon Valley (also not easy!) and what it’s like to deal with Apple (definitely not easy!).

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110224/video-mozilla-ceo-gary-kovacs-talks-firefox-4-competition-with-googles-chrome-and-more/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101101/browser-share-chrome-continues-climb/ http://allthingsd.com/20101101/browser-share-chrome-continues-climb/#comments Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:54:08 +0000 Voices http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=31846 The latest month-to-month changes in Web browser share, as calculated by analytics outfit Net Applications, are measured in tenths of a percentage point, but they’re consistent with the year-to-date trends–namely significant gains for Google’s Chrome, modest gains for Apple’s Safari and slight slippage for everyone else. In October, Microsoft IE held 59.26 percent (off about three points since January), Mozilla’s Firefox edged down to 22.82 percent (down from 24.43 percent in January), Chrome rose to 8.47 percent (up more than three points for the year), Safari crept up to 5.33 percent (eight-tenths of a point better than January) and Opera trailed with a steady 2.28 percent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101101/browser-share-chrome-continues-climb/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100930/opera-reports-surge-in-mobile-web-use/ http://allthingsd.com/20100930/opera-reports-surge-in-mobile-web-use/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:11:08 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30512 Opera Software ASA, maker of Opera Mini, the dominant mobile Web browser, reports that as of August 2010, global usage grew 108.3 percent since August 2009, and 6.8 percent since July 2010 alone. Pageviews increased 143.2 percent since 2009, and 14.3 percent since July 2010. Opera Mini commands 24.8 percent of the mobile browser market–BlackBerry, iPhone and Nokia, its closest rivals, each have 17 to 18 percent market share.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100930/opera-reports-surge-in-mobile-web-use/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100519/google-open-sources-vp8-video-codec-will-apple-and-microsoft-use-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20100519/google-open-sources-vp8-video-codec-will-apple-and-microsoft-use-it/#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 17:36:45 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=40975 Google’s plan to open-source the VP8 video codec has been rumored ever since the company acquired its developer, On2, in August 2009. After all, in the press release detailing the acquisition, Google clearly stated that “video compression technology should be a part of the Web platform.”

So it’s no surprise that the company announced an open-source, royalty-free HTML5 video format based on VP8 at its I/O conference Wednesday. What is surprising is the level of industry support Google has already rounded up.

Dubbed WebM, the format uses the VP8 codec for video and Vorbis codec for audio and is offered under a pretty permissive BSD-style license that makes it quite a bit more attractive than H.264, a rival format with pretty steep licensing fees.

Google is pushing the format hard. The company has convinced Mozilla and Opera to add WebM support to their browsers (Chrome support is obviously a given) and it has begun encoding all YouTube videos 720p or larger in the format.

Google has also lined up some 40 software and hardware vendors to support WebM. Among them: Oracle (ORCL), AMD (AMD), ARM (ARM), Nvidia (NVDA), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Brightcove. Also on the list: Adobe (ADBE), which plans to use VP8 for Flash.

An impressive lineup of supporters, though there are three notable omissions: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC). Will those companies come around and back the standard as well? Given enough industry support for VP8 playback through HTML5, they may have to. I’ve asked them and will update here if I hear back.

UPDATE: Intel tells me it will support WebM and V8, not because it particularly favors them but because it plans to support most video formats.

“We’re supportive of multiple formats,” a company spokesman told me. “We don’t support one format to the exclusion of another format.”

UPDATE: Interesting. There’s speculation that WebM may violate some H.264 patents. “VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264,” developer Jason Garrett-Glaser concludes after an exhaustive analysis of the format. “[A] pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be “H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder”. Though I am not a lawyer, I simply cannot believe that they will be able to get away with this, especially in today’s overly litigious day and age. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents. Until we get some hard evidence that VP8 is safe, I would be extremely cautious. Since Google is not indemnifying users of VP8 from patent lawsuits, this is even more of a potential problem.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100519/google-open-sources-vp8-video-codec-will-apple-and-microsoft-use-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100219/microsoft-browser-ballot/ http://allthingsd.com/20100219/microsoft-browser-ballot/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:26:59 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=35221 Microsoft will begin rolling out its “No Browser Left Behind” scheme in Europe next week, offering Windows users a choice of Web browsers, as stipulated by its antitrust settlement with the European Commission.

And so, beginning on Feb. 22, Windows users in the U.K., France and Belgium will be presented with a ballot screen offering them an opportunity to swap out Internet Explorer for one of 11 other browsers from rivals like Mozilla, Apple (AAPL), Opera and Google (GOOG).

“The browser choice screen software update will be offered as an automatic download through Windows Update for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7,” Microsoft (MSFT) Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner explained in a blog post announcing the move. “The software update will be installed automatically, or will prompt you to download or install it, depending on which operating system you are running and your settings for Windows Update.”

Once that’s done, users will be shown a ballot screen offering the option of installing one of the listed browsers, learning more about them or postponing the browser choice to a later time. Simple enough–assuming that automatic updates is enabled and that they actually care about browser choice.

If that’s the case, many probably dumped IE for an alternative long ago, right?

Anyway, as I said, a limited ballot screen rollout begins next week with full-scale deployment across the rest of Europe a week later, potentially reaching some 170 million PCs. It will be interesting to see how many of them end up switching to a new default browser.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Microsoft Announces Windows 7 Neelie Kroes Edition
• Brussels Palace of Justice Apparently Has Only Single Courtroom
• Great Move, EC. Now We Have to Download IE Ourselves…
• If Windows Didn’t Ship With IE, How Would You Download Firefox?
• Microsoft’s Browser Move to Make Windows Even More Annoying
• European Commission Announces Microsoft Antitrust Fine Ultimate Edition™

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100219/microsoft-browser-ballot/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091208/the-abcs-of-wii-xbox-and-playstation-3/ http://allthingsd.com/20091208/the-abcs-of-wii-xbox-and-playstation-3/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:47:12 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=953 With holiday shopping comes anxiety about getting the right gifts. Does Dad already own a copy of “Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits”? Was Mom expecting a new pepper mill, or was that Aunt Carol? It’s even worse for people shopping for the video gamers in their lives: Understanding the technical specifications of each console can seem as difficult as getting to the highest level in a game of Halo.

This week, I’ve done the dirty work for you: I’ve amassed a collection of vital details about the three most popular systems—Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii—so that you can get a handle on what each offers and what it will cost you.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo recently dropped the Wii’s price, for the first time, to $200 from $250. The Wii Console comes with a controller, an additional controller called a Nunchuk, and the Wii Sports game, which includes baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. It holds 512 megabytes of flash memory, but you can increase this by inserting SecureDigital memory cards. It also accepts high-capacity SD cards, or SDHCs, of up to 32 gigabytes.

The couch-potato world of videogamers was shaken up when the Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote control, was introduced about three years ago. Users can play Wii Golf, for instance, by swinging the remote like a golf club. In September, Nintendo added to its lineup a $20 remote-control accessory called Wii MotionPlus that was designed to add more precision to game motions. I tested this snap-on piece and found that it did make the Wii’s motions feel more realistic. But it works only with Wii MotionPlus games—and there are only six of them; 10 more are planned for 2010.

Wii encourages users to move around in more ways than just waving a remote: Its Wii Balance Board, which comes with the Wii Fit Plus game in a $100 bundle, works like a digital exercise step. It records the body’s weight shifts and movements for activities from yoga to wake-boarding.

The Wii accesses the Internet and lets users compete online against others. About 655 packaged games are available for between $30 and $50. Also, you can use pre-purchased Nintendo Points to buy and download about 150 WiiWare games and over 325 titles from the older Virtual Console library. Each game costs between 300 and 1,500 points, or between about $3 and $15.

WiiConnect24 can send messages from one Wii to another over the Internet, as long the two users exchange “Wii numbers.” Users can also surf the Web with Wii’s Opera browser. But beyond this, no other Web features—like downloadable movies, social-networking applications or streaming music—will work on this system.

Parental controls can be set on the Wii to restrict kids from using the Web browser, playing games that have a certain rating or communicating online.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft recently stepped up its game by adding features to its $200 Xbox 360 that make it well-rounded rather than strictly geared toward serious gamers. People who buy the Xbox LIVE Gold membership, for $50 a year, get applications for Facebook, Twitter, the Last.fm music-streaming service, online multiplayer game play, video chat, Netflix (Netflix subscription required), photo sharing via the Xbox, and movie or photo “parties” that allow users to watch a movie simultaneously with seven other friends.

Xbox LIVE Silver membership is free and includes basic features like voice and text chat, as well as access to the Zune video library’s 20,000 TV shows and movies to buy or rent. The Xbox also allows media-streaming over a home network. To wirelessly connect to the Internet on your Xbox, you’ll need to buy a $100 Wi-Fi adapter. By contrast, the Wii and PlayStation 3 have built-in Wi-Fi.

Anyone who owns a Microsoft Zune media player can buy a TV show or movie and download it to an Xbox or PC as well as the Zune. Zunes can be plugged into the Xbox to play music, as can Apple (AAPL) iPods.

The base Xbox comes with a wireless controller and 512 megabytes of memory. For $100 more, the Elite Holiday Bundle includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive, headset, wireless controller, and two games: “LEGO Batman: The Videogame” and “Pure.” More than 1,200 games are available for the Xbox, mostly costing between $29 and $60. About 350 of the games can be downloaded from the Xbox LIVE Arcade (costing 400 to 1,600 points, or $5 to $20) or the Games on Demand library.

Microsoft confirmed plans to introduce Project Natal, a system that lets people operate games with gestures and body movements rather than remote controls. Natal will work with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft won’t confirm a date.

Family settings let parents control whether their kids play games online and with whom they play, as well as the ratings of the games. A Family Timer regulates how long kids play.

Sony PlayStation 3

Sony’s PlayStation, like the Xbox 360, is designed with serious gamers in mind. Its base version costs $300 and includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a DualShock 3 wireless controller; $50 more buys a version with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Both systems can be upgraded with any standard 2.5-inch hard drive. The PlayStation is also a Blu-ray disc player.

Like the Xbox, the PlayStation 3, or PS3, now offers extra features, but these features are all included in the PlayStation Network, which is free (not $50 yearly like Xbox LIVE Gold). These PlayStation Network extras include Netflix (NFLX) instant streaming, a Web browser, photo slide shows, the ability to stream media over a home network to the PS3, a Facebook application that shares game information with friends and the PlayStation Network video-delivery service, where users can purchase 2,400 high- and standard-definition movies and 15,000 TV episodes.

The PS3 and the PlayStation Portable, Sony’s portable gaming device, are married in many ways. A new feature called Blu-ray Portable Copy lets users make a free standard-definition copy of some Blu-ray movies for transfer to a PlayStation Portable. Remote Play lets people stream media files from the PS3 to the PlayStation Portable in Wi-Fi hot spots or remotely turn the PS3 on or off using the PlayStation Portable. Movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Network can be transferred to either system, so you can start a movie on a big-screen TV and finish it on the PlayStation Portable; the same can be done for games.

About 400 games are available on Blu-ray for the PS3; these cost between $30 and $60. More than 150 titles, costing between $3 and $40, can be downloaded directly to the PS3. Sony confirmed that it will release a motion-sensing controller, but it hasn’t set a date.

Parental restrictions for the PS3 include the ability to restrict games, DVDs and Blu-ray discs with certain ratings. Parents can also limit monthly spending or Web browsing.

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Games: A Cheat Sheet

Here are some of the key differences among three popular videogame systems.

	NINTENDO WII	XBOX 360	PLAYSTATION 3
Price	$200	200 or $300*	$300, $350
Includes	Wireless controller, Nunchuk, Wii Sports	Wireless controller/ Wireless controller, headset, 2 games	DualShock 3 wireless controller
Additional remotes	$40 wireless; Nunchuk is $20	$50 wireless, $40 wired, $20 headset	$55 DualShock 3 wireless controller, $50 Bluetooth headset, $40 PlayStation Eye, $25 Blu-ray disc remote control, $50 wireless keypad
Memory	512 MB, can be increased with SD cards	512 MB, $300 Xbox comes with 120 GB	120 GB or 250 GB
Built-in Wi-Fi?	Yes	No. $100 Wireless adapter sold separately	Yes
Games	1,100	1,200	550
Cost of Games	30-$50; $3-$15 for downloads	Most are $29-$60; $5-$20 for downloads	$30-$60; $3-$40 for downloads
Other features	Web browser, ability to message other Wii consoles	Netflix, Last.fm, movie parties, MSN Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, photo sharing, online multiplayer gaming	Netflix, Facebook integration, photo slide shows, PlayStation Network videos, online multiplayer gaming
Extras	$100 Wii Balance Board and Wii FitPlus, $20 Wii MotionPlus	Xbox LIVE Silver is free, Xbox LIVE Gold is $50/year	Blu-ray disc playing, multiple tie-ins with Playstation Portable
Family Settings	Restrict online browsing, communication, game ratings	Restrict online play, with whom users can play, game ratings, time spent playing	Restrict online play, games or movies with certain ratings, monthly expenses, Web browsing
Relationship w/portable device	Wireless, free demo downloads from Wii Channel onto DS or DSi	Play videos bought anywhere on Zune, PC or Xbox 360	Blu-ray Portable Copy gives free copy of some movies for transferring to PlayStation Portable
Media streamed to console over home network?	No	Yes	Yes
* for Elite Holiday Bundle

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Xbox LIVE Gold costs $50 a year. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated in the second reference to the price that it costs $50 monthly. Also, the Xbox 360 can be connected to the Internet via an ethernet cable for free, as well as via Wi-Fi. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that connecting your Xbox to the Internet would require the purchase of a Wi-Fi adapter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091208/the-abcs-of-wii-xbox-and-playstation-3/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/ http://allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:02:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/ The war of the Web browsers has taken another turn with the release of a major new version of Mozilla Firefox, the No. 2 browser in market share, but No. 1 in the hearts of many of the most knowledgeable computer users.

This new edition of Firefox is the third big new browser release this year, following new editions of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer and Apple’s (AAPL) Safari. Unlike Firefox, these two browsers come bundled with the two major computer platforms, Windows and Mac. By contrast, Mozilla must convince users to download Firefox, which comes in essentially identical versions for both systems. And it has done a reasonably good job, garnering by most estimates around 23% market share, versus between 60% and 70% for IE, which is by far the leader. Meanwhile, Google (GOOG)—a former Firefox supporter—has joined the battle with its nascent Chrome browser, which so far runs only on Windows, but is due on the Mac one day and is to morph into a whole new operating system next year. And there are other very capable browsers with small user bases, the most notable of which is Opera.

I’ve been using Firefox since its inception years ago, and have been testing this latest iteration, version 3.5, since it emerged June 30. I can continue to recommend it as a fine way to surf the Web. The new version is improved, and worked very well for me on both my Windows and Macintosh computers.

But, in this round of the war, Mozilla’s product no longer stands out as clearly superior, for two reasons. First, Firefox has lost its traditionally biggest advantage: greater speed than its rivals. While Firefox 3.5 is about twice as fast as the previous version 3.0, and handily beat Internet Explorer 8 in my tests, it lagged behind both Safari 4.02 and the beta edition of Chrome 2.0 a bit in most test scenarios. Overall, Safari was fastest in most of my tests, both on Mac and Windows (yes, Apple makes a little-known version of Safari for Windows).

In fact, Mozilla no longer is claiming to be the fastest browser. It now prefers to say it is one of what it calls the “modern” browsers, along with Safari and Chrome, whose under-the-hood technologies make them better at handling a growing breed of sophisticated Internet-based applications that mimic traditional computer programs like photo editors and word processors and spreadsheets.

Second, this version of Firefox has relatively few new features, and some of them are merely catch-ups to those introduced earlier by Microsoft and Apple. Most notable among these is a private browsing mode, first popularized in Safari, and greatly expanded in IE, which allows you to traverse Web sites without leaving traces on your computer to show what you’ve been doing.

Mozilla says its main goal from now on will be to turn Firefox into the ideal platform for running Web-based applications. It shares the belief, also fervently embraced by Google, that consumers will gradually migrate away from programs stored on their computers’ hard disks to those stored in “the Cloud,” the industry’s term for the servers that run the Internet.

To show this, the new Firefox can do a few new tricks, like streaming video directly from Web pages without requiring plug-ins like Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash. Alas, this works only with obscure video formats little used on the Web at the moment.

Firefox 3.5 does include some new features, in addition to private browsing. It can pinpoint your location, so that any properly configured Web site can serve up locally relevant content. It has a nice option that lets you “forget” any Web page in your history, wiping out all traces you’ve been there, even if you neglected to turn on private browsing mode beforehand. And it can recover your open tabs after a crash.

Also, Firefox continues to lead its rivals in the number and variety of third-party add-ons that enhance browsing in myriad ways, such as adding features to sites like Twitter or making bookmarking easier.

As for speed, I tested Firefox 3.5 against its main rivals by timing how long it took to launch into the same home page, and how long it took to completely load popular Web sites like Facebook and YouTube. I tested how long it took to completely load folders containing numerous sports and news sites simultaneously. I also ran an industry benchmark test that measures the browsers’ speed at handling an important Web language called JavaScript. I did these tests on the same home network on both a Dell (DELL) and an Apple computer.

While Firefox won a few of these tests, Safari and Chrome won more of them. In most cases, the speed differences weren’t large, except in the case of IE, which was dramatically slower than the others. But this is the first new version of Firefox I’ve tested that didn’t win most of the tests.

Firefox is still a great Web browser, and still much faster than its main rival, Internet Explorer. But its edge is being eroded.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090702/rim-nearly-doubles-mobile-browser-share/ http://allthingsd.com/20090702/rim-nearly-doubles-mobile-browser-share/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:33:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20629 A noteworthy metric in the latest mobile browser share report from StatCounter: RIM’s BlackBerry has been making some meaningful gains in the world-wide mobile browser market. According to the research house, which tracks page views by browser on mobile devices and the desktop, RIM (RIMM) has boosted its share of the market quite a bit since the beginning of this year. Between January and May, BlackBerry mobile Web share rose from 4.9 percent to 6.9 percent in May.

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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090702/rim-nearly-doubles-mobile-browser-share/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090612/great-move-ec-now-we-have-to-figure-out-how-to-download-ie-ourselves/ http://allthingsd.com/20090612/great-move-ec-now-we-have-to-figure-out-how-to-download-ie-ourselves/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:30:51 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=19423 What a brilliant move.

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?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090612/great-move-ec-now-we-have-to-figure-out-how-to-download-ie-ourselves/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090522/brussels-palace-of-justice-apparently-has-only-single-courtroom/ http://allthingsd.com/20090522/brussels-palace-of-justice-apparently-has-only-single-courtroom/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 19:55:20 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18161 What silliness.

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.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090522/brussels-palace-of-justice-apparently-has-only-single-courtroom/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090224/faster-safari-kill-kill/ http://allthingsd.com/20090224/faster-safari-kill-kill/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:08:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=13473 Apple touts Safari 4, released as a public beta this morning, as the world’s fastest Web browser for Mac and Windows PCs, and after using it for a short time, it’s tough to disagree. Safari 4 is fast–three times as fast as Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3, if Apple’s typically hyperbolic claims are to be believed. That boost in speed is thanks largely to a new Nitro JavaScript engine (based on WebKit) that runs JavaScript up to 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, 30 times faster than IE7 and three times faster than Firefox 3, again according to Apple (AAPL).

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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090224/faster-safari-kill-kill/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20090211/using-foxmarks-on-different-computers/ http://allthingsd.com/20090211/using-foxmarks-on-different-computers/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:07:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20090211/using-foxmarks-on-different-computers/ Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

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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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090211/using-foxmarks-on-different-computers/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20080910/buying-a-pc-with-an-amd-processor/ http://allthingsd.com/20080910/buying-a-pc-with-an-amd-processor/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:32:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20080910/buying-a-pc-with-an-amd-processor/ Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

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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.

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