For its part, Microsoft has spent considerable time and energy tamping down security problems with its own products, from NT and other server software to its Internet Explorer browser.

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TweakDUN: Improve the speed of your dial-up connection by adjusting the Windows 95 MTU. TweakDUN also lets you create and edit a host file, which can dramatically speed up Web browsing: Instead of contacting a domain name server to look up every IP address, your browser will cache them on your hard drive.

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Online toolkits like Google Apps and Six Apart still seem more like gimmicks than real competitors to Microsoft Office today, but as server farms grow and become more efficient, the browser will evolve into the world's workspace.

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He also oversaw the development of NCSA Mosaic--the Web browser that led to Netscape Navigator--as well as the popular open-source server software known as Apache.

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One possible approach to these issues is to combine Chromebooks with third party solutions such as Ericom AccessNow, an HTML5 RDP solution that enables Chromebook users to connect to any RDP host, including Terminal Server and VDI virtual desktops, and run Windows applications or desktops in a browser tab.

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