Say goodbye to Internet Explorer Misery

I had one of those problems that beset every computer user once in a while; the inexplicable and apparently unprovoked failure of software that was previously working properly.

I tried to launch Internet Explorer, my internet browser of choice, and "Boink!". . . it wouldn't work. After a couple of fruitless re-tries, I decided to check whether there were any Microsoft updates that I'd missed. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to the appropriate site, because my browser was broken.

"Damn. I know. I'll download 'Firefox' . . .", and, of course you've already realized the problem, I couldn't do that either because MY BROWSER WAS BROKEN.

Did I hear someone whisper "Catch 22"?

Happily, I remembered that whenever iTunes throws me a software update, it tries to give me its web-browser too, so I opened up iTunes and asked for an update. There it was, 'Safari'. The downloading didn't require any web-browser registration nonsense, and was completely painless. 

So now I'm using 'Safari'. It's supposed to be nearly twice as fast as 'Explorer' and more secure as well. It seems OK, and it has allowed me to download the 2 new updates from the Microsoft site that are to address urgent security issues with Internet Explorer. Hmmm! Could it be these 'issues' that were original cause of my problems?