What are Internet Explorer advantages?

The web browser that you are using to visit that site - the same web browser that you may well be using to visit every other site - has the power to download and install "updates" to the operating system. It has the power to alter and modify the operating system.

As easily as Internet Explorer can download and install legitimate operating system updates from Microsoft, it can just as easily download and install malicious software pretending to be legitimate updates, from any other web site.

Answer:

Internet Explorer advantages:

1. Internet Explorer 4 is built into Windows. This is true whether you add IE 4 to Windows 95 or just use IE 4 in Windows 98. (Much of the added attraction of Windows 98 is actually added by Internet Explorer 4, so upgrading to IE 4 under Windows 95 gives you a kinda-sorta Windows 97 1/2.)
   Because of this tight integration, every file-and-folder window becomes a browser window. You never need to run the Web browser separately. If you have a window open showing, say, the My Documents folder, you can change the view of your local documents to a view of a Web site just by typing a Web address in the address line at the top of the My Documents window.
   This makes sense to me. You can ignore this feature and run the browser the standard way, of course, but why would you want to? Your file-and-folder window is a browser window already.
2. IE 4 uses all the regular Windows keyboard shortcuts. This can be very helpful if you do a lot of Web browsing, because you don't have to learn new ways of doing things with the keyboard. Hit the Backspace key and you back up to the previous folder in your hard drive or the previous page in IE 4, to give one example. Common keystrokes just plain make sense.
3. Java applets (small programs) run much better through IE 4 than through Netscape's browser. IE 4 also does Java a lot faster.
4. IE 4 uses real shortcut files for its Internet "bookmarks." You can edit them, copy them, put them on a floppy or send them by e-mail. They're files and not some sort of mystery meat the way Netscape's "bookmarks" are.