Should you make switch from Safari to Google Chrome?
Q: Recently I have received little notices asking if I want to change to Google Chrome. Do I? Is there an advantage? Is Safari becoming ancient and not efficient? Please let me know. If the answer is yes, please tell me how to do it.
A: For me, Safari seems to be just fine for use on an iPhone or an iPad, so I don’t see any real reason to change to a different browser on that platform. That being said, I know many people who have switched to Chrome or Firefox on their mobile devices.
It’s easy enough to do. You simply search for the app in the App Store and download it.
If you do decide to switch browsers, you might also want to take the additional step of removing Safari from the toolbar on the bottom of the Home screen and replacing it with your new browser.
To do this, go to the Home Screen on your device, and tap and hold an icon until all of the icons start wiggling. You can then drag Safari off the toolbar and then dragging the icon of your new browser into the space that has been vacated.
Even if you’re not looking to swap browsers, you might want to customize this toolbar with your more frequently accessed apps. Though the browser, mail, phone and messaging apps do tend to be the most useful.
As to using a browser on your PC, that’s a different story for me. I really dislike Safari on a Mac and Internet Explorer on a Windows computer and I will immediately download and install Chrome on any computer I am using.
You can download Chrome from google.com/ chrome, and you can download Firefox from mozilla.org/firefox.
The reason I prefer one of these on a computer is that they tend to render web pages much better than Safari or Internet Explorer, and they seem to be more secure.
The reason I don’t change this on my phone is that the better websites have two versions of their pages, one optimized for PC and the other optimized for mobile. The version that is optimized for mobile seems to work well with the default mobile browser.
Q: I have used Windows Live Mail on my laptop to capture my email from Comcast and Yahoo for five years. Recently, Live Mail will not download or send. Since Comcast set it up, I contacted its technical department and the response was that it doesn’t support Windows Live Mail. I don’t like Comcast or Yahoo Web Mail, so I would really like this to work. Do you have any suggestions?
A: In case you are unaware, Windows Live Mail has been discontinued by Microsoft and reached end of support in January 2017. That means that not even Microsoft stands behind this product anymore.
If the Comcast tech was worth his or her salt, he or she could probably assisted you with verifying your settings in Windows Live Mail.
In fact, Comcast has some pretty good instructions for configuring email clients, including Windows Live Mail, at tinyurl.com/ helplinecomcast, so I am sure you can get it working again.
However, it might be a good idea to explore other email client options since Windows Live Mail has been discontinued.