Microsoft: Netscape Communicator runs better in Windows 98

In a Windows 98 demonstration this week, product manager Yusuf Mehdi showedthat Netscape's Communicator and Navigator 4.0 Web browsers load morequickly and run faster on Windows 98 than they do on Windows 95. It is alsovery easy, he said, to set up Navigator as your default Web browser if youwould rather use that than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

"Netscape Communicator will work fine," said Mehdi, who was joined byMicrosoft CEO Bill Gates and several other industry luminaries who were onhand to show their support for Windows 98. During the early days of theWindows 98 beta, Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale complained that his company'sWeb browsers wouldn't even run on Windows 98. This week's demonstration wasdesigned to show that wasn't the case.

Mehdi also demonstrated that it was very easy to add a link to Communicatorto the Windows 98 "quick-launch" bar where icons for Internet Explorer andOutlook Express exist by default. The quick-launch bar, which is foundbetween the Start button and taskbar in Windows 98, allows users to launchfrequently-used programs with a single mouse-click.

Gates said Netscape is in a "great position to build products that run ontop of the OS.