Slightly Firefoxed and a Palava with Java

For some time now I have been frozen. Now this is not just the result of the current inclement weather conditions although they too have played their part, albeit on my person rather than my equipment. I refer of course to my IT equipment...

As a gentleman of a certain age I can, with ease, hark back to the early days of the desktop computer. Hard disks were small and floppys large and bendy. As a result, great care had to be taken not to waste bytes unnecessarily. One had to keep everything nice and tidy and delete everything you didn't need. This was known as housekeeping. Todays mobile phones contain much more memory space than the biggest desktop pcs in the days of yore and todays desktop computers have more disk space and memory than the early mainframe computer systems. It follows without saying that there is not quite the same urgency to be strict about housekeeping. Old habits die hard, especially in Chez Kojak and I pride myself in being ruthless in deleting files that are no longer needed and keeping my hard disk nice and tidy and performing regular disk cleanups and defrags like all good pc users ought to do. Despite this scrupulous attention my pc has been slowing up and even freezing with dismaying regularity. Although like my good self it is no longer (in IT terms) in the first flush of youth it has a long way to go before it goes to the digital geriatric home. Unlike it's owner it has ample memory and ought to be able to move at a fast lick of speed. I have tried various remedys but without success. 

Today I was paid a pleasant social call by the Blessed Ian, pictured right - he of patio building fame. Never one to let a golden opportunity pass me by I called on his professional computer skills to help me solve this conundrum. Having previously checked that I had the latest version of everything known to man and my computer he suggested that I stray from the old familiar Internet Explorer and try another internet browser. Having lived through the dawn of these alternatives and heard wails of despair from early users I have previously shied away from sampling these upstarts but needs must when the data bit hits the fan. We settled on Mozilla Firefox as the better of the alternatives. This had always sounded rather too much like Godzilla or Aston Villa for my comfort but my anxiety was soothed by the fact that I could always heap opprobrium on Ian's head if things went awry. Firstly we performed a tidying up operation which included ensuring that only the most up to date versions of software were held on the pc. Apparently when Java updates are downloaded previous versions are not deleted and Ian opined that my always vigilant anti-virus software might be trying to check through each of these every time Java swung into use and this might be a cause of the lack of speed and/or the screen freezes. All trace of Java was expunged with a severity not witnessed since the Krakatoa cataclysm. Java was reborn anew, all bright and shiney. Firefox was downloaded and launched with some trepidation on my part. I have memories of the several near misses undergone by the Russian plane in the film of the same name. Much to my relief nothing was shot down in flames. 

Although similar to the workings of the trusty old Microsoft browser there are a few subtle differences which I have not yet become accustomed to. Kojak is still slightly Firefoxed. 

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