Comments on: IE8 is available now

By: Duncan

Duncan — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:35:40 +0000

Thanks, Ed. Though I haven’t installed anything else on that box in weeks, your fix did the trick. I guess that’s why you’re doing this and I’m retired from the IT game.
Cheers,

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:22:59 +0000

Duncan, the disappearing CD/DVD drive is a longstanding issue caused by installing programs like iTunes. I am 99.9% certain IE8 had nothing to do with it. The solution is described in this KnowledgeBase article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

By: Duncan

Duncan — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:20:40 +0000

Installed on an XP SP3 machine and while the browser works fine, my CD/DVD drive has disappeared from Explorer and doesn’t work. If I hadn’t seen other posts online about the same problem, I wouldn’t have believed it. Everything was working, installed IE8 and the drive is non-functional.

I can only guess that given IE’s tight integration with Windows is at the root of this, but I’m really confused by this one . . .

By: Sahir Siddiqui

Sahir Siddiqui — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:52:05 +0000

No problems installing – it was surprisingly quick and easy – not like the IE7 upgrade.
Would like to maximize the browsing area – so many toolbars and tab-bars and menu bars ..

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:44:19 +0000

Phil, have you tried running No Add-ons mode or resetting all IE options? It sounds like an add-on is hanging at startup.

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:26:58 +0000

Installed on my home PC (XP SP3, 2GB RAM, Athlon XP 2600) and it is a disaster.

It takes around two and a half minutes to load (even just after exiting from it) during which time there’s minimal disk activity and CPU is pegged at 100% or so).

RC1 was fine.

I see others on the IEBlog with the same kind of problem.

By: evilkat

evilkat — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:39:40 +0000

Installed it on my home Vista box and it felt a lot zippier than IE7. I would say it feels just like FF, and the Foxmarks add-on worked great.

The accelerators are super addictive. I can finally get rid of the google toolbar because of the map-it accelerator (I only used the toolbar so that addresses get highlighted and automatically linked).

Accelerators and the zippy feel might convince me to switch over to IE from FF for regular browsing!

By: Paul G

Paul G — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:37:21 +0000

I’m surprised at how quickly this upgrade from IE7 installed on my Vista-64.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:31:01 +0000

Installed OK. Runs OK. I was writing a comment on this post in IE8, and found a pretty bad bug:
- I wrote my name and comment, forgot to put the email
- hit submit
- got an error page telling me I needed to put my email
- pressed the back button
- Horror! my comment was gone! I typed all of that for nothing!

This is a deal breaker. I think it’s not OK nowadays for a browser to do this… I thought this was a thing of the past, like from the nineties… I guess FF has spoiled me.

So there you have it. IE8 lasted for about 10 minutes, and I deem it unacceptable for any kind of serious use.

It looks OK otherwise, I bet it must be quite a step up from IE7.

There’s that, and also the dozen FF extensions I can’t do without anymore.

By: TJ

TJ — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:04:34 +0000

opps i mean iexplore.exe

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:08:57 +0000

Same configuration and experience as Matthew above. Definitely a good upgrade for IE 7 users. For FF ones, not sure there’s enough there to make them switch.

By: Stephen Pace

Stephen Pace — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:39:14 +0000

I installed IE8 successfully (on XP SP3) a few minutes after it was released. I was surprised how fast it downloaded–sometimes the servers bog down under first day download traffic volumes. Install went fast, reboot hung (although probably unrelated to IE8 install), and the laptop came back fine. Not surprising since the Beta was so good, but web applications like Outlook Web Access and Hotmail are SIGNIFICANTLY faster than under IE7. The only (minor) anomaly I’ve seen is some unusual background images in some commercial software, and checking Firefox, I see the same thing there too. Something that IE7 must have glossed over for some reason. All in all, a great update that I would recommend to any IE user, although I’m not sure it is quite enough to pry me away from Firefox just yet.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:32:27 +0000

Installed fast and smooth on my Vista Ultimate machine that was already running IE8 RC1. Seems to be somewhat speedier than the RC1, but that’s hard to really tell. IE8 is my favorite browser, though, and I actually run all the major ones out there!

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:58:41 +0000

I think l’ll use IE 8 this week since it’s new and probably go back to using Firefox.

Installed IE 8 and the only thing i find weird is when closing Internet Explorer 8 i have 2 ieexplorer.exe processes is still running. Is it normal for the ieexplorer.exe to run even when IE 8 is close?

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:57:15 +0000

Installed it on a WinXP netbook. Went on fine, checked a few sites that the version installed in Win7 7000 doesn’t render properly, and they worked fine too.