Mosaic makes the network seem faster by displaying parts of pages as they are transmitted, rather than waiting for the whole page to arrive before showing anything. NCSA Mosaic crashed more than any other browser. Mosaic couldn't communicate with my test FTP server either, insisting that there were no files to be found on it. Stand-alone GIF and JPEG files are so common that NCSA Mosaic's inability to display them is irksome. NCSA offers several good freeware and shareware helper applications for viewing GIF and JPEG files, but you lose some of the seamlessness of the Web when you have to switch between applications.
Helper applications can also consume memory at a prodigious rate.
Mosaic was once the top browser, but the current version has more bugs than the Florida Everglades and just doesn't offer a competitive suite of features. True, it's free, but in Mosaic's case, it's not worth the money. Enhanced Mosaic NCSA made an agreement with Spyglass, in which Spyglass would create a commercial version of the browser, called Enhanced Mosaic. Instead, it packages customized versions of Mosaic and licenses them to other Web-browser developers. To date, more than 27 companies have licensed Enhanced Mosaic from Spyglass.