MCC aka NCC R.I.P.

Never before was a funeral service so painful, so drawn out, or so costly.

Get It Try It

Mosaic Communications Corporation - later Netscape Communications Corporation - made the net. Once upon a time their browser was the most used program in the world. And the runner up wasn't even close.

Add a bit of corporate politics to be sure; add the determination of the Emperor in Redmond to squash them; but above all add Steve Case.

Jamie Z. truly knew how to read the writing on the wall and he got out. When Jamie left Mosaic aka Netscape was dead. All we've seen since is a carcass rumbling around as the hyenas pluck at it.

Let's make things very clear here: Netscape 6 is the most abominable major software download of the New Millennium. Easily.

Things were bad enough with the Moz milestones; they were worse with Steve's own preview releases; but things dive to a new nadir with this, the final release, the one that supposedly gets rid of all the annoying bugs. (Read elsewhere at this site about the horrors of previous releases.)

This is not the kind of program one wants to download, not with what has gone before, and not with full knowledge of what is behind the class action suit against Case, Real Networks (a huge collaborator on NC6) and NetZip. No - it's not pleasure - it's an unfortunate necessity. Hopefully this review will save others the time, the pain and the trouble.

Here are the system requirements for starters:

Mac OS

• Mac OS 8.6 or later
• PowerPC 604e 266 MHz or faster processor, or G3
• 64 MB RAM
• 36 MB of free hard disk space

Windows

• Windows 95, 98, or 98SE, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows 2000
• Pentium 233 MHz (or faster) processor
• 64 MB RAM
• 26 MB of free hard disk space

Unix

• Red Hat Linux 6.0, 6.1, and 7.0 with X11 R6
• Pentium 233 MHz (or faster) processor
• 64 MB RAM
• 26 MB of free hard disk space

(By way of comparison, radsoft.net's recent 2001/MMI release of the XPT runs on all 'Windows 4' platforms with as little as a 486 and even then runs fast.)

So much for Steve's code tweaking and getting a release up to speed.

Now here comes the worst: This review consists of two screen dumps, and no more. That's all there is to tell. Also, there is a bit of code you can look at. That's it.

Why? Well before you see it (it's on the next page), please understand that this review was conducted in the strictest environment possible. A clean setup of NT 4 was used. Netscape 6 was run as the first and only program after the Win32 login thread began. No 'ceteris paribus' was left to chance.

Ok, now you can turn the page by clicking here.