Thread: Who changed my Home Page?

Sometimes if you download something from the net some software suppliers might have tick box that you might have to untick that says install Bing as my home page or it might be Google Chrome or something else.

You have to watch this. I have seen this several times when downloading software.

Originally Posted by neksmerj

Suddenly my home page has changed from Google to something called Bing.

I have changed it back again, but how did this happen? With my recent good luck, I s'pose anything is possible, just par for the course.

Ken

Bing is microsofts attempt to beat google. I suspect if you installed any windows updates it might have done this.

As Bazza said above, you got to watch some of those software programs you install carefully and even when you click "Not to install" sometimes they are still installed. Very annoying when you don't want it in the first place.

Guess what I just had a window pop up asking me to update my settings in 'Windows Live Messenger" and guess what one of the settings was. Make Bing Your Main Search Engine.

I unticked it of course.

I set my home page to Blank. Then I am not paying to download a generally useless page every time I start my browser. If I want to search for something, I can manually go to a search engine of choice, or just type what I'm looking for into into the search box at the top of the browser window.

Originally Posted by malb

I set my home page to Blank. Then I am not paying to download a generally useless page every time I start my browser. .

Cost of downloading an average home web page in terms of download cost would be very insignificant in the overall scheme of things. The Google home page would probably be less than 30KB in size which with today's download allowance is almost nothing. On the other hand web pages with heaps of pictures on and suchlike would be another story and your idea might not be too far off the mark.

On a slightly different but related topic...

Last week my wife bought a HP printer to use in her home office - she is currently recovering from a knee replacement as has started to work from home.

The printer is one of those all in one type things with a scanner attached - $89 from Dick Smith -excellent value. It even has an email address so you can send it an email from anywhere and it just prints it.

I started up the included DVD to install the drivers - it took about 20 minutes. I could not believe the amount of work that was going on just to install a driver. When it finished, there was a mountain of software that had been installed. All sorts of crap. It took about 2 hours and numerous reboots to get rid of the junk. Firefox reported that it had rejected installation of 3 new browser bars. I don't know what else might pop up.

VERY BLOODY ANNOYING


HP used to be such a good company.

Originally Posted by neksmerj

Suddenly my home page has changed from Google to something called Bing.

I have changed it back again, but how did this happen? With my recent good luck, I s'pose anything is possible, just par for the course.


Ken

Microsoft! definitely, it owns Bing and channel nine is the domain they also own.

Originally Posted by munruben

Cost of downloading an average home web page in terms of download cost would be very insignificant in the overall scheme of things. The Google home page would probably be less than 30KB in size which with today's download allowance is almost nothing. On the other hand web pages with heaps of pictures on and suchlike would be another story and your idea might not be too far off the mark.

One person whom I provide computer support for had allowed friends and others to configure her a Google based homepage with streaming video, newspaper browsing and a variety of other bits. Ten seconds to down load to the point where the video would stream, and about 12 MB to that point. She was running on a Telstra 400MB plan and wondered why she was blowing her plan every month. Set to blank, instantly ready to work, no bandwidth wastage. Amazingly she habitually visits 7 sites stored in her favourites, occasionially visits other sites by direct address entry, and searches with a search engine once a month or so.