If statistics are anything to go by, Internet Explorer is the biggest and the most popular browser on the Internet. Of course, all of us geeks here know that statistics are not always correct … or fun.

But, well, the truth is that IE owns anywhere between 60-70 percent of the browser market and despite it’s flaws, it’s still going strong. While most of the geeks have long moved to Firefox, there are millions of Windows users who still swear by IE, not because they like it but because of the simple fact that it is bundled along with their OS – Windows.

I like to call myself a reluctant Windows user, at best. Microsoft Windows is something I use only when I have to and even then I make sure I don’t touch Internet Explorer even with a 10 ft pole.

Needless to say, whenever I login to my Windows desktop, every couple of weeks, I usually have a slew of updates waiting for me to install them, which I always dutifully install. That’s what updates are for, right ?

Well, this is where the sad part of the story begins. I haven’t really had a problem with any MS updates till now but when Microsoft, in a recent update, pushed Internet Explorer 8 on my computer, all hell broke loose. A lot of web based applications I rely on daily started acting weird. Active-X Add-ons that I need for my work stopped working. IE 8 crashed a lot more and was much more buggy than IE 7 and that is saying something, considering that I hardly used IE 7 also .

Which is why I decided to get rid of IE 8 once and for all and write this post so that it may benefit others who are in a similar situation. I use Windows Vista so some of the instructions might be Vista specific.

The browser today means a lot more than it did ten years ago, heck it means a lot more than it did even two years ago.  In today’s world the browser represents not only a way to view the musings of the Internet, but it’s also the thin face to many server-based applications.  The browser is becoming more and more of a dependency every day.

I guess that’s why this little application called BackRex Internet Explorer Backup intrigued me so much.  Over the years I have been through many OS rebuilds and changes, each time having to make adjustments to my browser settings to get them just the way I like them.  That includes the manual backup and restore of cookies, favorites, connections settings, and add-ons.  BackRex’s Internet Explorer Backup simplifies that task by automating the process from start to finish.   Here’s a little walkthrough of it’s basic features.