Cotwold Tea is one of the sites and I have never been there or told them anything.
Anyway, given that there is all the hoo har over IE6 and one can't use it anyway, is it worth downloading IE8 in case one needs IE.
Or should I just perserve with the alternatives.
I have been trying Firefox and it is already on my nerves as well.
www.cotswoldtea.com comes up as a dangerous site in both Opera and IE7.
They have been around a while (got the domain name in 2003) so presumably a genuine site that's been hacked or is delivering viruses via badly handled adverts from third parties.
I'm unsure about IE8 because last I heard it had problems of its own. I'm not sure how that stands now. What you could do if you wanted is try IE7 first. You can't get it from Microsoft, but they have the versions on oldversion.com and then you could go to Windows Update and let it give it the latest IE7 patches.
Well it is not meant to be. I downloaded the old 7 and then it ran something that said it was uploading to 7 and it took a long time and restarted and now it is still 6.
So who knows what it did. But it took its time whatever it was. I think one needs to take note of these signs from fate and so I will give up for now. If I have to I may do the real 8.
That IS odd. I have done it on several PCs without problem.
Yeah, maybe 8 has been sorted out and is okay now. You would still tend to get some sites that didn't work quite right (but fewer with time as the sites get updated).
Does all this hurrah about China and Tea explain why Google keeps giving me the "prove you are a human" test?
For the last few weeks, every once in a while, Google refuses to do a search, explaining "your computer may be covertly trasmitting something or other insert illegal/undesirable message here"... and then challenges you to read their squiggly codeword and type your interpretation of it, before you can proceed with your search.
The first few times this happened, I took it seriously, and ran spybot to figure out why/how I was transmitting something or other undesirable.
But now I just shrug, do the squiggly test and carry on transmitting whatevah nasty it is I may or may not be transmitting. 
Can't find out anything about that one. If you are actually logged onto Google then a search by you might be treated differently. On the Google search results page do you see a username at the top right or a 'sign in' option.
It might also be different if you have the Google tool bar installed
I don't mind having to jump through their hoop.
It just worried me that my comp had picked up some sort of virus or worm, and might actually be transmitting something insidious or invidious, like messages to the effect of "I Love the Pope" or "Support American Oil by Offshore Drilling", yer know?
I've run diagnostics repeatedly, kicked out any possible undesirables, and I still get the google test from time to time.
As long as I just MAY be transmitting something rather than AM transmitting something, it's okay by me.
@ those possible messages