On iMacs, connections and Firefox

The iMac’s starting to grow on me. It’s fast (granted, not as fast as my PowerMac), the 20″ screen is clear, and it has not crashed. However this Mac uses wires for everything – keyboard, mouse and ethernet. Our financial sponsors, i.e. our parents, felt that wireless devices wasted batteries (which is true). Of course I’d still have liked to get AirPort and Bluetooth.

Anyway, after attaching iSight to it as well, the iMac’s back became a tangle of wires. For some semblance of tidiness, I’ve hooked all these wires through the hole at the back of the monitor stand.

The wireless no-reception saga continues: We bought a D-Link DWL2000AP access point and put it upstairs, within range (1/5 or 2/5 bars according to a Centrino-powered laptop) of the wireless D-Link router downstairs. However, while my PowerMac (upstairs) was able to connect with the access point and access its control panel, it was unable to connect to the internet.

Then we learnt that both devices’ IDs, passwords and channels ought to be the same. We configured that, but still didn’t get any internet connection upstairs. Argh. We even reset the access point manually, to make sure we started anew.

Next piece of news is that I was told that it was recently discovered that Firefox had three security flaws. Is that true? Because if it is, my case for introducing Firefox back to the office will probably be weakened. My argument in response was that IE had numerous security flaws, certainly more than three. However the answer to that was that at least there was an assurance that Microsoft fixed bugs rapidly.

On the contrary, this latest article by ECommerceTimes says:

…while newer browsers such as Firefox were built for blocking pop-ups and phishing attempts at ID and information theft, Explorer was not.

Despite months of griping, I realise I’m in no position to challenge authority and I understand the need for standardisation to better manage the security policy. But I just want to know the truth, and be able to speak up for the best possible browser we could have.

[Update: Found one security flaw report on Firefox – ironically it’s on phishing!]