Microsoft paints their Pinto

Since this is a Ford enthusiast publication delivered to you via your internet browser, we thought the recent analogy by one of Microsoft’s competitors, comparing the new Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) to Ford’s Pinto was extremely fitting.

HÃ¥kon Wium Lie, the Chief Technology officer of Opera – an internet browser alternative to IE, discussed Microsoft’s release of IE7 with ZDNet blogger Richard MacManus. He told Richard in a recent interview that Microsoft’s IE has been historically plagued with problems. “These bugs have been lingering and a pest to society.” In recent years several competitors to IE have taken a huge market share out of Microsofts dominance in the browser market. Web users no longer have to put up with poor support for CSS (cascading style sheets) for instance.

While HÃ¥kon credits Microsoft with making great efforts to improve their browser performance, he says the underlying machinery of the Internet Explorer browser will always be a problem. In this regard he compares Microsofts efforts to “doing a paint job on your Pinto.” The Pinto of course earned its bad rap as the symbol for 70’s era cheapness and poor automotive saftey.

We say forget about all the bickering and download (for free) FordMuscle’s recommended broswer, Mozilla Firefox. It would be like trading in your Pinto for a 2004 Cobra.