Hands-On Report--Netscape 6 PR2

The bottom line? Don't waste your time unless you just want to play with it. I tried it today and it's too much trouble. PR2 crashed/froze too much on an iMac DV SE. In addition, the activation procedure had to be repeated every time it was re-launched. However, Josh Cisneros reports no crashes on his iBook.

Netscape 6's download and install procedure is much like QuickTime's. A small installer stub is downloaded from Netscape's web site. When launched, it contacts the Netscape servers and downloads and installs the components for your computer setup. There is an option to check to keep the eleven individual modules on your hard drive. Otherwise, only the finished installation remains.

The first launch of Netscape 6 takes an interminable amount of time as it "registers" most of its unbelievable 3300+ files. Then PR2 goes through an activation procedure, whatever that is. Subsequent launches were faster but still required the activation procedure and were still much slower than v4.74 or Internet Explorer v5. Slowness is a feature of this build. Opening items from the menus, like the preferences file is very slow even on a 400 MHz iMac DV SE. However, web pages seem to download fairly fast.

On the positive side, a themes feature has been added and two skins, classic and modern, are provided. PR2 also now provides an integrated spellchecker for outgoing email. Not much else to report on this build. Here is an InfoWorld article. [Dana Baggett contributed]