The last time I used IE 8 I had to stop using it because it was reported that it broke Windows Update. But being that I just reinstalled XP on my older Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop I decided to give IE 8 a go to see what had been improved since it’s in Beta 2.

My particular laptop was a good test bed for this because it’s an older machine with a 1.5GHz Celeron M with 1GB of RAM, and testing newer software on older hardware is a good test to see if performance has improved or not.

After I installed IE 8 I was prompted to restart the computer (of course). After restart I fired up the browser and this is the first thing I got:

I decided to choose “Ask me later” just in case I feel like using this. Most likely I won’t because I don’t like a browser telling me what sites I should visit.

The welcome page after that looks like this:

This is just a simple welcome-wagon landing page to tell you what’s new in the browser. The tour page is here if you want to check it out.

Accelerators

The first thing I checked out was something called accelerators. What you do is drag over some text, right click and a blue box with an arrow appears. Click that box and you get some options.

Like this:

It is appreciated that Google is listed in here along with any other search provider you want to have enabled within the browser, but of course the primary offerings are all Microsoft products.

Search bar

Okay, this is good. Said honestly, IE 8’s search bar officially kicks the crap out of the way Firefox does it.

I’ll show you why.

Here’s an example search using Google in the search bar:

Note that my search providers are directly listed as clickable icons at the bottom. Very nice. I can hot-switch between any of them at whim.

But wait it gets better.

If I do an eBay search for “dell xps”, watch what happens:

I get not only results but real-time auctions with bids included. All this stuff is clickable and will take you direct to where you want to go.

Here’s one searching for “tampa bay” on Wikipedia:

This is a huge sell on this browser. Nobody else does it like this without add-ons/plugins/whatever. IE 8 has got this built right in. All browsers should do search like this, period.

And if you’re asking “How fast is it?” concerning the results, it’s near-instantaneous after you start typing. No slowness here.

Domain highlighting in address bar

This is a small visual cue but I actually really like it.

Notice the domain (microsoft.com) is black and the rest of the address is gray. I do like this because it’s easy to spot and easy to know where you are at any time.

Whenever a browser uses color cues to benefit the user, this is good.

Find feature finally moved to a place that makes sense

If you do a CTRL+F to search for text, the find field is now at the top where it should be. This has been a longstanding complaint of mine with all browsers, but IE 8 cured this in short order.

Looks like this:

You’ll also note there is added functionality such as how many results of the search there are, additional options (match whole word or case) and so on. It’s a worthy improvement especially considering the text search in IE 7 completely sucks.

Tabs

I have both good and bad things to say about the tabs.

First, this screen shot:

It’s very trick the browser asks me whether I want to reopen recently closed tabs because yes, I have closed tabs accidentally before – so that’s a welcome improvement.

The “InPrivate” option is directly listed when you open a new tab – also nice.

My only complaint is that there is a pause before the tab opens. I have yapped about this ever since IE 7 was released because the tabs are slo-o-o-o-w compared to Firefox or Opera. When you ask for a tab to open in either of those browsers, wham, it’s there. In IE 7 and 8 there is still a noticeable pause.

Final thoughts for now

There is no question in my mind that when this is officially released I’ll download it immediately on my primary PC. This is a no-brainer upgrade.

Compared to past versions of IE, the improvements in this one make it a landmark release. This is the one that even the most diehard Firefox users will try and say “Finally, an IE that doesn’t suck.”

The last version of IE I actually liked was IE 5.5. Version 6 was so bad that it was the reason I switched to Firefox in the first place. And 7 is so slow compared to Firefox’s speediness that it’s not even an option to go back.

Version 8 on the other hand is a game changer. It’s got the real-deal goods and isn’t just a “patched 6″. I do look forward to the official release of IE 8.

As far as switching back to IE is concerned, I can’t say that I would because the add-on/plugin support simply isn’t there with IE – at present. Maybe with 8 we’ll see some decent plugins? It’ll be interesting.