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Unless there is a VERY specific reason for not installing IE8, I believe it is irresponsible to discourage people from installing this rather important update to WINDOWS, not just the browser.
Explorer is deeply tied into the entire OS, and the rendering engine is used by many other Windows applications.
And it also undermines the legions of web developers out there wishing and hoping that people will FINALLY upgrade to IE8, and hoping the automatic update push will be our salvation. Why? Because IE8 is the closest Microsoft has ever come to building a reasonably non-broken, mostly standards-compliant browser that won't break sites on a whim, or cause endless hours of headaches tracking down and fixing IE-only rendering errors.
Be responsible ... don't tell people to skip important Windows updates. That's what gave us Conficker for cryin' out loud!!! How to roll back to IE7 if 8 breaks your computer ... okay, I can see that. But disabling it? Most non-kosher.
I'm sure that IE8 will someday become the stable and important update it could be, but what's irresponsible is forcing it on people when it clearly has so many issues.
17-May-2009
People who know what they're doing skip important updates all the time. My company's desktops are all XP but they still insist on IE6 as the company standard. Now, don't ask me *why* they like IE6 so much ... I'm just saying, lately lots of MS stuff is being skipped, esp Vista, and now IE8. It's not that big a deal.
Posted by: DT at May 19, 2009 9:05 AM"...undermines the legions of web developers out there wishing and hoping that people will FINALLY upgrade to IE8..."
Oops, I'm sure you meant to say Firefox.
Posted by: DT at May 19, 2009 9:08 AMI have Vista with auto update turned on and running unattended overnight. Will it try to install IE8? Should I try and prevent it?
As to whether anyone should block it, that's a decision I can't make for you. Today, I suggest skipping it, but many people have had good experiences as well.
20-May-2009
I think people who like IE should give IE8 a try. It is a big improvement over previous IE versions, although I have found Firefox better for too many reasons to discuss here.
I wonder how much malware the company using IE6 has - if none, what other precautions are they taking? Group policy restrictions?
Having said this I disagree with henaway that Leo is being irresponsible. He is telling a user how to do something...it's still the user's choice.
I disagree 100% with the first "comment" on this page, who took Leo to task for not being "responsible".
I have 3 machines (XP, Vista 32 and Vista 64. When I installed IE8 on my Vista 32 machine, I immediately started getting browser crashes. Extremely frustrating. I ended up rolling back to IE7 and hid the update on the other 2 machines.
Leo is wise man. First Poster speak with forked tongue.
How are we ever going to know when IE8 is acceptable. Microsoft must think it is acceptable now. Does that mean that they have gone on to work on IE9? (or whatever they call it) Is there a cadre of geeks out there that will give us the "go ahead" to start using IE8?
What I can tell you is that I'm certain there's a team of people at Microsoft who continue to work on IE8 - if for no other reason than to fix bugs and prepare updates. Unfortunately the lead time for all that work is often long, and we may not see the results for some time. (They're also probably focused first on Windows 7 issues.)
I think it makes sense to keep an eye on sites like mine or others who are a) experimenting some with IE8 themselves, b) paying attention to what's being said around the net, and c) have a stream of incoming questions about IE8 related issues to get a gauge on the current state of the product.
As others have suggested, switching to FireFox is also an option, as is staying with IE7
20-May-2009
I have the same question that someone else asked: "I have Vista with auto update turned on and running unattended overnight. Will it try to install IE8? Should I try and prevent it?" Can someone please answer?
Posted by: Steve at May 19, 2009 3:18 PMI HAD IE8 on my computer thinking it would be faster. What a joke that was. My computer got even slower than what it was. I removed it from my computer. I realize that there are other issues because my computer is slow, but IE8 made it even slower.
I would much rather follow what Leo has to say because he has no interest (monetary) in IE8.
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You're kidding - right? "mostly standards-compliant"?
That precisely encapsulates why informed computer users get upset at the arrogance of Microsoft. They just never seem to want to play fair with the rules. They were miles off the mark with W3C standards once upon a time but with greater competition from browsers such as Firefox, have had to use better compliance. Closer in IE7 and closer again in IE8 if we're to listen to you. Well, why don't they just bite the bullet and make it FULLY compliant? Ummm, because it might compromise other MS products? I don't know - maybe you can fill us in.
For non-informed computer users, they just blindly accept all updates and then wonder why they have problems.
And one final question. How on earth is it that IE8 is a 13.3MB download against Firefox's 7.1MB or 7.35 for the standalone installer for Google's Chrome. I guess bloat equals size, not features
Posted by: David at May 20, 2009 2:04 AM
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