RALEIGH, N.C. — Many people are looking for alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Explorer because of security problems with instances of spyware installed on their computer.

For a growing number of people, Firefox is the answer.

People who love it say it provides the benefits of Internet Explorer without the hassles.

For Robin Bartholomew, an IE user, nothing annoys her quite like pop ups.

"Yeah, pop-ups all over the screen were just horrible," Bartholomew said.

But not anymore now that Bartholomew is using Firefox.

"It makes browsing the Web a lot quicker," Bartholomew said. "Not only is the browser itself quicker but it allows me to function a lot better because I'm not always going to close all these windows that I don't need."

She's one of many people making the switch.

"Firefox has taken off and it's much better than all the others in my opinion," Amnon Nissan, a tech guru.

Firefox blocks popups and it's less likely to allow spyware to get on your computer.

Nissan still has a program to block spyware on his PC -- but he says he doesn't need it.

"Since I've been running Firefox, which has been a few months now, I can run that program once a month and it doesn't even find one," Nissan said.

Firefox also has the Google search engine built into the toolbar. And, it brings over from IE your bookmarks and browser history.

"I don't miss anything on the Web," Nissan said. "There is nothing really it doesn't do that Microsoft Internet Explorer does."

Maybe best of all, it's free and easy to get.

"It's nothing to install," Nissan said. "It's a lot smaller, it goes on does its thing. You don't need to choose anything."

Robin Bartholomew doesn't ever plan to go back to anything else: "I'm hooked," she said.

There are some snags with Firefox and other browsers like Opera.

People using those browsers might encounter some sites that don't fully support them, leading to display problems.

WRAL.com recently made changes to support Firefox and other browsers.

If you install Firefox, the experts say you should still keep Internet Explorer in case you need to get Windows updates.