How to get rid of Internet Explorer?

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I typically use Opera, and for the things that won't work on Opera which happens here and there I like to use google chrome, or I'd even use firefox but I feel like that takes up a lot of space. Anyways I don't use internet explorer and I hate it anyways, it just takes up memory and crap I assume. The problem is I can't find any way to delete it. One of my brothers friends mentioned some program you can buy with a delete feature that will allow you to delete internet explorer, but I can't remember what it was.

So yeah any ideas on how to get that off my computer? Or should I just invest in a non-windows computer when I have the funds?

You can remove it as a Windows component under Control Panel > Programs and Features, but a number of programs render things like their help windows using it, and the preferences window where you can take it out of your Windows install is not very intuitive. The next time you're prompted, remember to allow Opera or Firefox to set itself as the system default browser, that should stop you seeing IE most days, although occasionally I've had it autorun simply because Microsoft is so stubborn.

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I never use IE (or only very rarely), but I suggest you leave IE on your computer. It is sometimes used by third party software to display information, so removing it (if that is even possible) may cause strange faults with other software or even system crashes.

One of the software products I developed makes use of the rendering engine of IE to display information in a formatted tabular display - you wouldn't know it was using some of the core technology of IE though. On a technical note, Microsoft exposes an interface that allows developers such as me to show a window and to populate it using a programatically generated HTML page on the local computer. As already mentioned, some developers may use this functionality to generate custom interactive help windows.

Things like the desktop shortcut and menu items can be removed easily enough but as others have said, it will be tricky to fully remove it and other things would break even if you succeeded.
But, at least with all visible signs of it gone and another browser (any other browser! ) made the the default, you have a workable and safe alternative that looks and behaves as if IE had been removed.
Watch out for Windows updates sneaking it back in as the default, though - most browsers will ask, if they're not already the default, so a sneaky change back would be spotted as you started Opera.

Isn't the downloading of windows' automatic updates for example done via a hidden IE process in the background?

So even if I could get rid of it, then it could mess up other things. I suppose in that case I'll just leave it.

I much prefer Firefox, but there are rare occasions when Explorer is useful simply because as noted, certain other apps tend to default to it.

i think as a rule its a good idea to have a good few browsers, including IE.

If, by a feat of insane inconvenience and misfortune your other browsers develop faults or malware infections that require re-installation you may need IE later on to redownload the necessary installation files.

Also as a rule I think its a bad idea to mess around with the default software on Windows in this manner.

For all practical purposes, you can't uninstall IE.

Easiest thing to do is make another browser your default and remove the shortcuts so nobody is easily inclined to open the program.

i suppose if you hate MS sotware so much switch to Linux or Ubuntu?

^ It's only a browser - there are alternative (and better) browsers available for Windows, and ignoring one browser while using another has to be easier than learning a whole new OS.

I would recommend to keep it, as it can be useful sometimes.

This thread reminds me of back in high school when on the computers in the computer lab people would rename the Internet Explorer icon to Internet Imploder and Entrepot Exploder.

Use it once, then leave it alone. The one time you need to use it, being to download a different browser.

As a replacement, you might want to give Qupzilla a try. It's a WebKit browser that uses the Qt Toolkit, so it doesn't have that nasty Chrome/Chromium UI, and isn't as CPU intensive as Google products, or current iterations of Firefox.