A Cnet article details a surprising study that shows Firefox users see four times FEWER ads than Internet Explorer users.
Firefox is the free Web browser that is increasingly popular with Windows users because it is faster and has fewer security problems than IE. It also apparently does a much better job of blocking pop-up ads, which may account for some of the differences between the two groups.
I had to spend a couple of days working on a Windows machine last week, using IE, and I was shocked at the number of pop-ups--it was actually difficult to get work done at times. I've been rather spoiled, I decided, from Safari, Apple's browser, and Firefox. Both do a pretty good job at blocking pop-up ads; so well, apparently, that I had begun to take it for granted.
Firefox is free, and can be downloaded and installed easily.