Les in Chorlton: if you have an older operating system (Win 98 or 95) and a a slow machine, then it is possible for too many programs running to slow or crash your machine...just like putting too much weight on a truck.....and there are a very few security programs that do not "play well with others", but there is usually no reason to NOT have one program of each type (anti-virus, anti-adware, firewall) installed.


Mr Red...Firefox will indeed show history if you are offline.(though I'm not sure why you'd bother usually) It has a setting for "work offline" and a special history manager that shows you all the links for as far back as YOU tell it. Same with Opera.

IE5.5 and Netscape 4.7 are, in fact, LESS safe and secure than Firefox and Opera, when those are properly set up.
If you are that paranoid and suspicious of the 'normal' operations of a browser, you must have a tedious time using the internet ....

"allegedly"?? refreshing the page? *tsk*...sorry...but browsers do not contain spyware that "report" to the sites you visit...cookies do that, and cookies can be easily controlled.