What is Microsoft Silverlight and why do I need it?

@ dybanitedave...did you even proofread your post?

Looks like you were drunk when you posted this garbage.

NOT ONE of my friends trust MS IE because of a security flaw that has plagued IE since version 4 and they had no idea as to how to fix it...Same with OUTLOOK EXPRESS. It was so broken and patched that they could not see the "cloth under the patches", so they discontinued it and abandoned it in favor of Microsoft Live Email and MS Live Essentials.

BTW, WOT (web of trust) has been out for FireFox for years...it is just now being implemented for IE which kinda makes your "security" statement about IE ludicrous, being that WOT was designed for FireFox and was "ported" to IE for what? To make it more safe?

IE 11 MAY be as secure as you say, but most old school techs and geeks would rather shy away from IE in any form than take another chance.

I am currently typing this on Windows XP sp3 with the Pale Moon derivative of FireFox, but I'm here to tell you that this is the last MS OS that will ever go on any of my machines.

I have already Loaded Linux Mint KDE 64 bit on my other machine, and am very happy with it. It comes with tons more software than MS ever offered, and it is totaly free, from dvd burning, to media payers to text to speech programs...oh yea, did I mention that it's all free> That includes the OS. The popular Linux distros are free Like Linux Mint, OpenSuse, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, etc, Comming from Windows, I would recomend Mint Cinnamon edition. Did I mention that Mint 17 is an LTS OS? LTS is short for "Long Term Support" and as Mint 17 just came out, it will be supported till 2019. So you can install Linux and be just as safe (even more so) as you would be in Windows

I may abandon Windows altogether and delete it from my Xp machine, as I'm getting tired of useless programs that annoy me, like I no longer use outlook express, but it still wants me to compact my email, I keep saying cancel, but everytime I start Windows Live mail, or when I start this computer, it asks if I want to compact my mail....HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY NO?

I'm so done with Microsoft and their antics

This also may be my last post here, as I see no point in supporting an OS that doesn't give any choice.

GO LINUX!

first off I was NOT drunk I do not drink. Sorry as I look at it, it does look that way but I had to disable mouse pad when external mouse is attached. That's why some things look all out of whack... It kept happening to me when typing, my palm hits mouse and places the cursor somewhere else in paragraph. I respect your opinion, but when I downloaded Firefox I DID get a lot of spyware and even a rootkit, which I had to go into registry to completely remove. That was just my opinion on browsers. And I don't like Google as you don't like Microsoft, see we both have our own preferences and opinions. Google just collects too much personal data, and I didn't like the facet after the first 3 add-ons installed on Firefox I had to do virus removal procedures and I also didn't like the whole set up of that browser... Like I said before I guess it is just individual preferences. Sorry about the first reply, when I look at it I would have thought " hey this guy was messed up on something" LOL... I use outlook for my business contacts and more, so I have to keep IE but I will also try some of the things you mentioned like LINUX... WOT is a great tool and since I don't use Firefox I didn't know it was out there before IE. Well just a thank you for bringing all to my attention especially that messed up reply I sent you, but I did go into control panel and set the mouse properties to shut off pad because 99% of the time I have an external mouse attached.... Thanks again and have a great day!!!

Yea, I don't like Google either...they are into too much of our computing as it is.

Glad to see that you weren't "on something" and it was just a glitch.

Another alternative to Chrome and IE is Opera.. and there are a few others as well, but this is the most common besides the other three e.g. google's Chrome, IE and FF.

I am using "Pale Moon" and it is kinda like "old school" firefox.  I personally haven't used IE since ver 4 or 5.

If you are serious about giving Linux a try then, I have a test for you, actually more of a questionnaire than a test..but they call it a test..they ask questions like "have you ever run Linux before" and depending on the answers you give, it recomends a certain distro, or group of distros. So, you just answer simple questions, and click next (you may have to scroll down to see the next button)

Edit:  The test is here>http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php?firsttime=true

Because I'm a linux newbe it recommended (for me) Linux Mint. L really like Mint...With the KDE desktop it feels a lot like Win7 to me (with the obvious Linux differences though)

I'm not ready to completely ditch MS just yet, but I'm getting closer every day.

There are free office programs for Linux and if you want to try them BEFORE you try Linux, you can try http://www.libreoffice.org/  and another free one is http://www.free-office.org/

There are also some good free email clients also like "thunderbird" which has a layout similar to Outlook Express.

Hope this helps, and I hope you have a great day.