I have been a Firefox user for many years, ever since 1.0 in fact. I have had my fair share of different extensions over the years as time went on, that number increased and decreased as I installed extensions I had come across or ones that others had recommended and as I uninstalled ones that were no longer of any use to me. Well now I have a few extensions and these are some of the only reasons I wouldn’t switch to another browser. Here are my must have Firefox extensions.

Faviconize Tab – I have so many tabs open at one time. When I open my browser, the same 16 tabs open up for me. That would take up a lot of room on the tab bar. Fortunately Faviconize Tab shrinks the size of selected tabs to the size of their favicon. I go to the site so frequently I am able to recognize the website by that small icon they have. I don’t need a big title wasting space so that extra room is able to be used on other links I open.

Net Usage Item (with New Zealand ISP Definitions) – It’s been forever since I actually have Internet allowance but even with unlimited, I still find it interesting to see how much data I’ve used (and slow down if I need to.) This extension is probably one of the most useful ones I’ve ever used. It displays your current usage from your ISP and displays it in the Firefox window with a nice graphical bar showing your progress. This is a must have for all Firefox users, assuming your ISP is supported.

Nighty Tester Tools – I have always been an early adopter of the alpha and beta builds of future versions of Firefox. I enjoy using and playing around with new features before most “normal” users get their hands on them. Unfortunately one of the problems with doing so is you lose add-on support. For a lot of people, this is enough to hold out people from jumping on the latest beta. Well thankfully for me, this extension can overwrite compatibility constraints and force extensions to install on these pre-Firefox builds. The extension can do a lot more than that, but the force capability feature is the best and most useful one for me. It gives me the best of both worlds, pre-Firefox builds and my 2 great extensions.

Wow, wasn’t that a short list. I remember when I use to have over a dozen extensions and now I only have 3 (4 if you count the extra definitions pack.) These few extensions give me the functionality I want and need from my browser and that is one of the reasons that Firefox is so awesome. You can add on bit and pieces to enhance your browsing experience. If you haven’t got these extensions already, go get them if the sound like something you could do with. I live by these extensions and recommend them greatly!

Today VodafoneNZ finally announced the iPhone 3GS plans, or should I say re-announced the iPhone 3G plans? They are exactly the same as the current plans. Disappointing still. I would have loved to go on the iPhone 40 plan if it was any good, but $40/m would get me 20 minutes, 100 SMS and 250MB of data. I require more SMS than that, 100 is a joke. That also would have taken the 32GB iPhone 3GS down to $899 dollars, from the regular $1379.

I would like to know why the price of the phones went up. Is the recession to blame? Were Vodafone selling the 3G at lower prices but since it can now be taken over to other carriers they’ve increased it to cost price? I was hoping that it would be at the $1199 price point like the highest model 3G was but no, they’ve jacked the price of the highest iPhone model up further.

What am I going to do then? Initially I wanted to switch to XT, I still do, but I am going to stay on Vodafone so those poor people that can only SMS other Vodafone people can still SMS me, unlike those lucky Telecom people that can SMS everyone. I need a national SMS plan (TXT600) which is not available on Vodafone Prepaid so for that I need to go on a plan. I am thinking the Starter 600 would be a decent one for me. It includes 30 minutes, 600 SMS and 1 Bestmate. That costs $29.95 a month, and with the Broadband Lite add-on (100MB,) that brings it up to $40 a month. We’ll see what I do on Friday. Hopefully I’ll be the proud owner of a 32GB Black iPhone 3GS.

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