Inertia is a powerful force, even in the personal productivity software marketplace. That may explain why Internet Explorer remains the dominant web browser, in spite of the existence of alternatives with superior features and performance. My favourite is Firefox, the open source browser launched a year ago by the Mozilla Foundation (www.mozilla.com).

Since then, Firefox 1.0 has been downloaded 100m times and has garnered a little less than 10 per cent of the browser market – a creditable performance given that Microsoft’s IE comes bundled with many new PCs and most corporate IT departments are particularly cautious when it comes to change.