Just downloaded IE8, first impressions...

[JohnC]

The appearance is pretty similar there was only an extra menu bar, after install which could be disabled quite easily. Everytime you highlight something a little blue box appears with an arrow, which you can use to search the highlighted terms into your default search provider. I could see how this could be useful if you were going to copy and paste it into a search engine window anyway, but I found it quite annoying and disabled it. As an extra security feature, if you come to a page that uses adobe flash player it pops up the yellow info bar and asks if you want to run the adobe flash player addon. I chose to run addon for all websites, as I have the latest updated version.

As for positive aspects, it is much faster rendering pages than IE7. It feels like the pages are downloading faster, when the reality is I guess they have always downloaded that fast, it has just been slow rendering time by the browser. So far it is worth the download, but I'll wait and see how my opinion changes.

[CM_MWR]

Definitly has some issues but its OK for work reasons. 

Opening externals with large data and tabs with large data is still an issue, I did not see this when I used IE8 in Win7. 

[JohnC]

Displaying quantity of iexplore.exe processes in Task Manager, compared to running instances of Internet Explorer is incorrect.

I can have only one Internet Explorer window open but two iexplore.exe processes running in Task Manager. I can have 4+ Internet Explorer windows open and have only 3 iexplore.exe processes in Task Manager.

[MysteryFCM]

Two things I've noticed;

1. There are now more than the previous amount of index.dat files
2. The damn address bar auto-complete/search cannot be turned off (e.g. I type "spy" and it lists everything with spy in the URL, instead of everything beginning with spy, which is how it should damn well work). Been through the options, and can't turn it off

Oh and, what the hell happened to "Do not search from the address bar"? ..... bleedin option isn't there anymore - just an option not to send unknown addresses to the search provider (definately not the same thing)

[Orac]

IE8 broke my machine, big time. As soon as i tried to edit a post in a forum the machine went into an endless auto scrolling routine. Trying the "compabilty" setting in IE8 didnt solve it.

Then i tried to remove IE8, and the fun really started!!

1. I couldnt use any system restore points, they were all broken.

2. I found a removal tool on the M$ help site, it did remove IE8 but failed to restore IE7 correctly. IE7 would open, but crashed everytime it connected to a website.

3. Tried to unistall/reinstall IE7, that failed. IE7 would reinstall, it would open, but crashed everytime it connected to a site, see 2 above.

4. After much searching around the M$ site looking for any hints, i came up with the following procdure, which did give me IE7 back in working mode.

a. uninstall SP3
b. uninstall IE7
c. reinstall SP3
d. reinstall IE7

Conclusion, installing IE8 breaks system restore, if IE7 was installed before SP3, it breaks the M$ recover tool.

Searching the web it seems a lot of users have experianced the identical problems i had.

Serious point, if i hadnt allready had FF installed on this machine, i would not have been able to connect to the net at all due to the way they had borked IE7, and therefore would not have been able to obtain the required information, or downloads, that were used to fix the problem. It makes you wonder just how many IE7 users have been affected in this way and are still unable to connect to the web.

Nice work M$ 

[SysAdMini]

My laptop ended up in blue screens after IE8 installation.
Only solution was uninstall in safe mode.

[CM_MWR]

Hmmmmm.....couple of thoughts.....well only one actually....Acronis True Image 

It installed fine on both vista and xp here but I still have my trusty acronis backups stored locally and externally.

[CM_MWR]

The damn address bar auto-complete/search cannot be turned off

Control Panel..Internet Options..Content..Auto Complete..Settings and Uncheck all doesnt work?

Im being lazy and leaving it on for now.

[CM_MWR]

Oh and, what the hell happened to "Do not search from the address bar"?

Control Panel..Internet Options..Search..Settings..Manage Ons..Click any of the search agents and the find the blue letters out by Search Suggestions--> Disable suggestion?

Hahaha...I have no idea how to use this browser. 

[MysteryFCM]

hehe that's been disabled since I installed it, but cheers anyway (was one of the first things I tried)

[CM_MWR]

Steve, I think your IE8 is on crack dude...I had those steps work perfect for me, wonder what hell you got there???

IE8 still have same issues its always had, it just cant digest large data pages at all, not even extended xml files which should open with ease cause my Quad 3.2 to about choke, only excuse I can give IE is that the system is 32bit and only has 3G of ram...

Not much of an excuse for it to choke like it does....otherwise, its working as well as any other browser, atleast its not like firefox and when you open, go get some coffee and come back, maybe FF is loaded up by then.....p00 on em both, ill stick with Opera...browser has yet to fail me.

[MysteryFCM]

hehe I like Opera myself too (doesn't support my extension pack though as it doesn't use the MenuExt key - only reason I don't use it full time (well that and, apparently you can't selectively enable/disable ActiveX/Javascript etc etc)).

Not worried about the IE8 issue now, as thanks to an extremely generous donation, I've finally got myself a new laptop (old one was next to dead), and IE8 doesn't seem to have this problem on here

[CM_MWR]

Heh...yes....nice new laptops make life much easier...
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=G180-15004

32-bit built on 64-bit/32-bit compatiable hardware seems to make a real difference, this laptop is a monster and chokes on little to nothing that I can throw at it. 

[MysteryFCM]

hehe