I downloaded and installed IE 8 on my Windows XP machine and it was sluggish compared to IE 7 on the same machine. I ended up removing it and going back to IE 7. I haven't tried IE 8 on my more powerful Vista machines, but don't really expect different results.
Anyone else finding the same results with IE 8 compared to IE 7?
Mark H
I tried the beta version some time back, but with mixed results. Uninstalling it didn't work as well as it should have.
I'll give IE8 a spin on my my signature system after I image it using Acronis True Image 2009.
I've been using it on my Windows 7 build and haven't noticed any sluggishness. Haven't tried it on any other OS though.
Buff
I just installed IE 8 on our laptop that runs Vista 32. It is snappy and works very well. As a result, I am thinking that maybe it isn't very good for XP 32, but is great for Vista at least in my experience.
Mark H
I went with the 64 bit version on my sig system. Although it's a little early to say for sure, I just installed it the other day, my first impression is positive. Seems fast and when I imported my bookmarks it picked up all the favicons as well. I don't remember that being the case with IE 7 or the beta of 8.
One thing I notice that is somewhat annoying is that I have to click on the folder that contains bookmarks or favorites in that folder to open it. With Firefox when I go down the list of folders that contain my bookmarks the folder just opens and displays the bookmarks contained in that folder.
Edit; I'll have to take that favorites thing back, if you use the menu bar, then the favorite folders open as you roll through the folders. It's just with the favorites listed on the favorites bar that doesn't.
With the positive performance on Vista 32, I am going to install the 64 bit version on my Vista 64 machine. I may think about giving it another shot on the XP 32 machine, but it will be a while.
I found the problem. I had previously used spybot and adaware and immunized my system with them. They put 10,000 or more entries into the restricted sites list. I found out that IE8 can not handle this large amount of restricted sites quite yet. After removing them, I find IE8 runs just fine on my XP machine.
Mark H