American History 1988
Chapter 403 - 392: Magic Duel

Chapter 403: Chapter 392: Magic Duel

To confirm whether it was a problem with his own network, Tony specifically clicked the Toktok icon.

A long rectangular window appeared on the right side, and many avatars in the contact list turned gray.

But the top few were still in color, so Tony randomly clicked on one and then tapped a few keys on his keyboard.

"David, are you there?"

Ding-ding, almost the instant Tony pressed enter, a response sounded.

"F*ck you, Tony! When are you going to return my ’Penthouse’? I can’t sleep!"

With a click, Tony silently closed the chat window and set his status to offline.

The network wasn’t the problem, Tony thought, frowning in confusion.

Not giving up, he opened the comic webpage on his browser and refreshed it once more.

However, nothing changed, and after loading for a long time, a crash page still popped up.

With some computer skills now, Tony opened a new tab and quickly typed in the Yahoo URL.

A few seconds later, the familiar scene appeared again.

Dammit, what on earth is going on? Why were all the pages disconnected?

His network was clearly fine, he had just tested it with Toktok, and everything was normal.

Impatient, Tony started fiddling around. The router was working fine and the cable plug wasn’t loose.

Even other internet apps were usable, only the web pages weren’t working.

Right when Tony was about to give up, the webpage suddenly refreshed itself, and the familiar comic page came up again.

"What the f*ck?" Tony couldn’t help but curse.

Nevertheless, his problem seemed to have been resolved, and he immersed himself back into the world of his comics.

However, before Tony could really dive back in, the webpage... crashed again.

"Shit! I’ve had enough!" Frustrated, Tony slammed his keyboard.

He had just gotten into the storyline when he was rudely interrupted.

If it had only happened occasionally, that would have been bearable; after all, network fluctuations or server issues were not uncommon in this era.

But this was the second time, and within just half an hour.

Who knows if it would keep happening, and Texans do not have a good temper.

Tony wanted to shut down the computer and out of sight, out of mind, hoping that everything would be better tomorrow.

But thinking of David whom he had just contacted, he clicked open Toktok again.

"Alright David, I’ll bring your ’Penthouse’ over tomorrow, but you have to help me solve a problem first."

David had been involved with computers much longer than Tony and always boasted about being a hacker among his friends.

Although it was uncertain how much truth was in that, everyone would still instinctively consult him with their computer issues.

So, Tony did the same; he thoroughly described everything he had just experienced.

Soon, David replied, "Did you restart the computer?"

"Uh, no, but my Toktok is working fine. Look, I’m chatting with you."

"You’d better try restarting; it can solve most of your problems."

"Okay," Tony did as instructed, but clearly, it still didn’t work.

"David, it’s still the same."

"What about other websites?"

"Same problem."

This time, David took a bit longer to reply, perhaps he was racking his brain for a solution.

It took a while before he messaged again.

"What browser are you using?"

"The default browser on the computer." Tony had bought a new computer and hadn’t bothered fussing with other software.

"What?" David was puzzled by his response.

"The icon is a ship’s helm." Tony glanced back at his desktop, "Oh right, it’s called Navigator."

"Amateurs use Navigator!" David clearly perked up, replying faster now.

"Once your browser is back to normal, immediately go download a Netscape Explorer.

After you do that, instantly delete that piece of shit from your computer! It’s the real culprit!"

Tony didn’t know what Navigator or Explorer was, nor had he ever heard of the Netscape company.

But still, he subconsciously followed David’s advice since he didn’t have a better solution at the moment.

After waiting idly for a few more minutes, the webpage refreshed itself again.

With a jolt, Tony sat up straight and started tapping furiously on the keyboard.

He needed to race against time because if the page crashed again, there was no telling how long he would have to wait.

After opening Yahoo, fortunately, Tony immediately spotted the top-trending Netscape browser.

This hot search list was updated in real-time, and the more frequently a keyword appeared during the current time frame, the higher it ranked.

Naturally, Tony clicked on the title, and the webpage quickly redirected to the Netscape browser official site.

A big green "Download" button was very conspicuous, and from there, everything went smoothly.

Even a novice like Tony could easily handle it with the foolproof installation tutorial.

As expected, the original webpage crashed again.

But this time, Tony wasn’t upset, he pinned all his hopes on the new icon that had appeared on the desktop.

A blue letter "e," very recognizable.

A gentle click of the mouse, ding, a brand new window popped up.

Wow, it’s beautiful, Tony really liked the user interface of this new browser.

Although he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was so beautiful about it, they just felt comfortable to look at.

The most crucial thing was that his familiar Yahoo appeared again.

Yes, Tony confirmed it once more.

The computer’s default browser was still crashing, but the newly installed Explorer browser was smooth and unobstructed.

Just as Tony was about to open his beloved comic website, another pop-up window suddenly appeared.

"Detected local bookmark records on this computer, do you want to sync and import, completing the migration of favorite pages?"

What? Tony was stunned. What is this feature?

Although curious, he still tentatively clicked "Confirm."

Then a magical scene happened, the comic he had been reading halfway was directly transferred to this new browser.

Even the progress was maintained consistently, and there was no need for him to start flipping from the beginning.

"Holy shit!" Tony was amazed by such an intelligent feature. How did it do that?

However, the surprises did not stop there; all the websites he had previously bookmarked were also transferred to this new browser.

With his mouth wide open, it took Tony a while to react, and then he quickly clicked on Toktok.

"Hey, David, this Explorer browser is super cool!"

"I told you before, only newbies use that crappy old Navigator.

The only use of the Navigator browser is to download the Explorer browser!"

"You’re absolutely right. I’ll try out this super cool new browser first."

"Wait, my ’Penthouse’?" David hurriedly added.

However, what responded to him was Tony’s avatar turning gray again.

"Shit, this guy is pulling the same trick again."

Sitting on the other side of the computer, Tony did not hear David’s curse.

He was like someone who had got a new toy, continuously trying out the new browser’s features.

It was also at this time that Tony discovered that Explorer had an app store, a real treasure trove.

My God, what did he see in the app store?

A comic reader, and a variety of rich games and application plugins.

Okay, at this point, he had already tossed the crashing Navigator to the back of his mind.

He only remembered it again before going to sleep when he uninstalled the Navigator.

It was indeed a piece of shit.

Prone to crashing and hard to use, Explorer could almost kill it in all aspects.

...

Navigator 3.0 was released and received positive initial media reviews.

Because it had indeed improved significantly compared to version 2.0, if judged only from the perspective of a browser’s trial use.

Microsoft’s Navigator 3.0 version had satisfied most people’s needs.

With the release of the new version, Navigator finally gradually attracted some users.

However, this situation did not last a week before Microsoft’s customer service center suddenly received a large number of complaint calls.

"Why does your browser fail to open webpages often? It breaks down easier than our weed whacker at home."

"Sir, please first check if the network is connected properly."

"Mother F*cker, it’s your browser that has a problem, my Toktok works perfectly fine!"

Similar dialogues were constantly unfolding.

The angry complaint calls almost drowned Microsoft’s customer service center.

As the current spearhead of Microsoft’s internet strategy, it wasn’t long before the issue alarmed Silverge, the head of the browser department.

"So guys, have you found the cause yet?" Silverge arrived at the technical department and immediately started questioning right at the door.

"Um, we’re working hard to investigate." The department head Slicaf anxiously wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Intuition told him that this time the issue was troublesome. With Microsoft’s technical strength, they still hadn’t found that bug in the code.

"Are you saying we are completely clueless right now?" Silverge’s face turned so cold it seemed like water was about to drip from it.

"We are conducting a comprehensive investigation of version 3.0, including the underlying code, screening layer by layer.

But this needs time, and from the current inspection results, we haven’t found any issues."

This was exactly what baffled Slicaf. Based on user feedback, they had initially identified some likely areas.

But the results of the checks showed that while there indeed were some minor bugs, they were not significant enough to cause webpages to crash.

"Can we replicate the problem that users complained about here?" Silverge quickly thought of another method.

"We’ve tried, but..." Slicaf pointed at the computers in the office, "Look, they are all using the Navigator browser.

But after several continuous hours, not a single person encountered an issue similar to the one reported by users."

That was another bewildering point for Slicaf. There were so many complaint calls.

Callers from across all 50 states of America, they couldn’t possibly be conspiring to lie.

But only in Redmond’s Microsoft did they not encounter the webpage crashing issues reported by users.

At first, Slicaf also suspected it was the users’ network issues, but they kept insisting that the Netscape browser worked fine.

Damn, it can’t be that all these people were shills hired by Netscape, right? Impossible.

After listening to his subordinate’s report, Silverge also fell into a state of having no clue.

Could it be that the problem did not originate from the Microsoft browser itself?

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.