Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

On this fabulous post-Christmas day, I’m pondering why I’ve been using Firefox for the past few years. When I changed over from Internet Explorer to using Firefox, it was due to the world wide web peer pressure – hordes of tech geeks crying out how “evil” IE has been and how insecure.

The truth is, Firefox is by no means more secure; there have been more security issues for it in the past year than for Internet Explorer, which rarely has any “holes” anymore, due to the overall patching of the OS by Microsoft.

Having moved over to the Windows 7 platform, it seems that not even a clean installation can speed up Firefox, that chokes on every occasion. Even with the network tweaks available for it, most of the time Firefox appears to be more of a turtle than a speedy fox.

Perusing Expedia has been an absolute nightmare with Firefox, resulting in hang pages and resubmitting of queries; lots of lost time and even a double booking. I had to end up using Chrome for that one, that cut through Expedia like a hot knife through butter.

Web sites that utilize ajax technology to query databases or push out content are the slowest. Having tested both Chrome and Opera I’ve concluded that Opera is by far the best and most stable browser, second in speed only to Google’s Chrome browser. As the new millennium’s “Big Brother” isn’t Microsoft, but Google, I somehow refuse to surrender an extra layer of privacy to the company who proclaims to be “Not Evil” but gathers all the info that they can on every individual that uses their services.

Therefore, in the new year 2010, I am switching over to Opera. Available from www.Opera.com the software has been around for several years and is loaded with features and capabilities that match or surpass those of other browsers. Yes, Internet Explorer has maintained the majority of the browser market for years now, ever since Netscape died in the hands of AOL. But that’s another story to be told in 2010.

Happy last weekend of the year!

Today, Verisign announced the increase of their fees for registering/renewing .com/.net domains. Per contract, they are allowed to increase the fees up to 7% annually. No such increase occured in 2009.

My response: big whoopie.

To those domainers among us with no long term memory; there was a time registrations cost $50 per year with a 2 year minimum.

A 50 cent increase in registration/renewal fees means an increase of costs by $50 per 100 domains, $500 per 1,000 domains or $5,000 per 10,000 domains annually.

Renewal fees are qualified business expenses.

Now it’s the time – for those of you that haven’t already done so – to incorporate and take advantage of the benefits of a corporation or an LLC.

At the same time, consider using a CPA professional for doing your taxes as they will assist you with your strategy to maximize expenses and better manage your revenue.