^Nonsense.^
*that is only what you get if you check off EVERYTHING in the installer. Otherwise Active Desktop will not be enabled. In fact, come to think of it, I don't think I got any checkboxes at all the check off. the only result was that I had an IE icon on the desktop. The horror! That looks more like an OEM customized version of Windows 95 OSR2.
I have an "old" Windows 98 System and it didn't run slow with IE4 junk, it doesn't run slow with "IE5 junk" either. Well, not slower then I would expect, it being 133Mhz and all. It didn't run noticably faster without either, anyway.
One cure-all solution in the windows 95 case is to simply not install IE of you don't want such "annoyances" as the quick-launch bar, sane Explorer windows, or a desktop that let's you have a background that isn't simply centered or tiled but also allows for stretch. (I think it allows you to use JPG and GIF as wallpaper; by default you can only use BMP and RLE.)
The site you linked, I've seen it before. Some idiot trying to live in the past. You can tell because the page itself is designed using barebones HTML. Additionally he seems to enjoy weaving conspiracy theories:
Microsoft began bundling or requiring Internet Explorer as a non-optional component of their software products. They even "convinced" many other software vendors to bundle Internet Explorer as well.
It was "non-optional" because the rendering engine was starting to be used more prevalently. Also, many features (such as the Rebar control, ListView, and Treeview controls) used functionality from IE (well, actually, no... what they did was the Common controls were part of IE4 but they were not redistributable; so vendors who used the controls had to check to see if IE4 was installed. his implication that Microsoft strong-armed vendors into doing this is nonsense, since they could have simply written their own controls and not installed IE4, but apparently they found it easier to do it that way. Their choice- not Microsoft's.
And as if forcing IE on all Windows users wasn't bad enough, Microsoft forced Apple to bundle IE for Mac as their default browser instead of Netscape. If Apple refused, Microsoft would discontinue MS-Office for Mac.
That is simply dead-wrong. Microsoft didn't force apple to do squat. In fact, If Microsoft had offered that ultimatum, Apple would have gladly declined, since one of the competitors to Office for the Mac was Appleworks as well as a few other Apple supported applications. Office for the mac was hardly the only choice people had- in fact it was not even a very popular one at the time. The two companies entered into a partnership. What reasons would apple have to choose the lesser of the two browsers (netscape)? It had already suffered several years up through 1997.