A folow up to Kev999's post about web browsers, Google Chrome in particular...

I have been using Chrome because for some reason IE9 stopped displaying a lot of pictures. I began getting a little blue circle with a slash instead of whatever picture I was trying to view or place in a post... Chrome seemed to fix this...HOWEVER, after reading Kevs post I checked a newly opened instance of Chrome and I didn't see it right away, I did notice a small bar at the top left with a website I have not visited in quite a while. I tried to remove it but could find no option at the link display to do so and did not feel like going into options etc and digging... then I notices the little arrow pointing back at the side of the page. Normally my home page opens as two instances, the first is the Coffee House ( yes I have no life), the other is just a Chrome browser page. It opens with four large icons, Google, Youtube, and I don't remember the other two because I never use them and I am now back in IE9.
So... I clicked the back arrow on the left of the Chrome browser page and behold... two rows of tiles with pages I have frequented and not frequented. There was a small "x"in the upper right of each that I used to delete one, then... another appeared in it's place. I hit the "x" again and it went to just a Chrome page,though just a tile... to be clear. I deleted another and one I didn't even recognize came in its place.. and so on.
 
I turned my computer last night when I realized the Alabamavs Ole Miss game was going to go on until WAY late. I turrned it back on this AM and decided to run CCcleaner right off.I have it set for one wipeing pass and it runs fairly quickly and is efficient... and free, HOWEVER... when CC got to 44% and gave me a message that it needed to close Google Chrome to continue.... well, I did not have Chrome open. I checked the quicklink bar and it did not shoe Chrome open. So I clicked "yes" to close it. Then I got another dialog box..."Google Chrome is taking too long to close. Do you want to force it to close? (really?) I clicked "yes" again and it closed BUT my question is what was it doing open and why was it open in some sort of stealth mode or whatever because all I did was start the computer and run CCcleaner... I did not open any browser.
 
I'm like, just because everyone is watching me does not mean I am paranoid... Google Chrome disturbs me just a little some...  a good bit. I am no longer comfortable using it, I was always a little bit su****ious how considering Google seems to really beintent on gathering information of every kind, not just what I do online but they want a picture of my home etc... I know that is going toward their goal of driverless cars, something I hope to not live to see.... at least not government mandated driverless cars... but that, I believe is Google's dream and where they figure to become the most profitable corporation in history... but I digress.
 
I need a browser that does not look weird, that I don't feel is looking over my shoulder, is not displaying stuff about my browsing habits, and WORKS with this Cakewalk forum software that seems to be a problem for most browsers... other than the Cakewalk forum IE9 seems to work fine. I've tried updating abobe Flash player and whatever else I think might cause the small blue circle w/slash in the place of a picture.
 
Anyway, I was not happy that Chrome was open, but not visually open. I was upset that it was displaying pages I don't even remember visiting... I was using an old version of FF that Bub had recommended but one day it stopped working right, probably something I did but I couldn't get it to work right anymore. So... what works for you... see my specs below. Basically W7 SP1 64bit.
 
Thanks and beware! They are watching...
 
Julien