DeBow's Review is a continuing commentary on our digital world. It's Web Guide

offers a quick look at the many options available in the most visited categories on the

World Wide Web. WebSiteFaves is a review of many of our absolute favorite websites.

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Portals / Home Pages - General

How do I love thee, let me count the ways. Everyone has a favorite home page (that is among the folks who know they can change* their home page, some still have the one that came with their computer). While there is no way to really rank the incredible variety of home pages / portals available on the web, we offer a brief look at some of our favorites.

 AOL                                     Yahoo!

No review of portals could possibly not begin without the two gray beards in the group, AOL and Yahoo!. Both are great sites, and anyone would be hard-pressed to find real fault with either. Yahoo!, of course, is considered by most to be the leading portal (in # of visits and page views) on the web, when all of its offshoots (Yahoo! Finance, etc.) are

considered.

MSN

MSN from Microsoft is certainly one of the market leaders, and with the addition of its new Bing search feature should continue to be one of the dominant players for some time to come.

iGoogle

Google has recently launched the beta version of iGoogle, its own portal so we’ll have to watch them in the future.

Refdesk

Nothing fits the description of a "General" home page better than refdesk.com our consensus absolute favorite. As their site says; "Since 1998, refdesk indexes quality, credible and timely resources that are free and family friendly." You may not want refdesk for your home page, but you certainly should have it in your favorites / bookmarks.

* Want to change your home page?

In Chrome, surf to the page you want as your new Home Page, then click the Wrench icon, then click "Options," then in "In Start Up" click "Use current pages."

In Firefox, surf to the page you want as your new Home Page, then click "Tools" than "Options" than "Main" and in "Startup" click "Use Current Page."

In Internet Explorer, surf to the page you want as your new Home Page, then click "Tools" than "Internet Options" which will bring you to "General" where you click "Use Current."

In Safari, surf to the page you want as your new Home Page, then click the Gear icon, then click "Preferences, then click "Set to current Page."