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    Informal Assessment of IE8

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by lineS of flight, Jul 12, 2009.

  1. lineS of flight

    lineS of flight Notebook Virtuoso

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    Hi Folks...

    This is not really a question - more of a personal assessment of IE8, which has now been out for a few months.

    Having been a dedicated Opera user, I have found myself - ever since the release of IE8 - using IE8 more and more. Correspondingly, my usage of Opera has fallen. I only use Opera now where IE8's password manager does not work, which is only on some sites. If there is a peeve I have against IE8, it is this - the password manager is horrible, whereas that of Opera (to me) is an elegant solution. I think this is one area where IE8 can make significant improvements.

    I should also mention that I am not a 'power user' as most of you folks are though I am on my machine for over 12-16 hours a day. I use my machine for browsing/ research, email, writing, some spreadsheet work and for making presentations. However, I also find myself getting more and more into the 'cloud' for various stuff. I am on a 'garden variety' Vista (Home Premium) - based machine.

    IE8's interface for some reason seems less 'in the face' than IE7. I have also come around to trust it a lot more than what I did IE7. To me, it is quite minimalistic - though I wonder what if there were IE8-specific themes released by MS...I think there are ways to make the IE8 interface even more minimalistic, but then again, I am no expert in these things.

    I have not experienced any crashes with IE8 thus far - but who knows what the future holds. Pages seem to load as fast as the latest stable version of Opera - or at least so it seems to me.

    I find my budding exposure to 'cloud'-related works more seamless with IE8 than with Opera, but maybe that will change with the next Opera release - version 10, I guess. Let's see.

    Another thing I have found is that I have started, albeit hesitatingly, using MS's Live Services - particularly, SkyDrive, which I find much better than Gmail's corresponding service - though for email, I still use Gmail and here IE8 has not given me any significant problems, unlike Opera, which still does - though much less frequently than before.

    I also use some of the "Accelerator" services on IE8, which I find helpful. The colour tabbing, while nice to look at, really is not a big deal for me. I do not use the 'web slices' functions - have found no need to use them as of now.

    So, all in all, I have found IE8 quite good for my purposes. And, for those of you who may be wondering why I have not mentioned FF...well, I have never really been comfortable with FF though I do keep an updated copy on my machine...though I don't really know why.

    So, has this post been of any use to anyone? Probably not, but I thought a layperson's experience may be interesting to some of the folks on this forum. If it is not, then Mods, please do feel free to delete.

    Cheers!
     
    lineS of flight, Jul 12, 2009
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  2. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

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    Among the other services, Live mesh and Live Sync are pretty good as well and are only fully compatible with IE8.
     
    jackluo923, Jul 12, 2009
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