Diary of a Wolfeman

Here is a phone pic of my computer 3 minutes into the process of installing Internet Explorer 9:

Why a phone pic? Because it had to completely shut down everything else, including:

• Antivirus
• Firefox
• Media Monkey
• All the widgets
• Logitech software
• and Windows Explorer.

So why it took 6 whole minutes when it wasn’t fighting anything else for my processors or 6GB of RAM, I have no effing idea…

So no, it didn’t actually require a reboot, but it did completely take over my computer for 6 solid minutes while it downloaded and installed the new package. So yay, no reboot, but WTF?!? Why are you STILL making the browser such an integral part of the operating system?

Chrome, Firefox and Opera all run quite happily without being so integrated. What the hell do you do that needs to be so wrapped up in the whole system other than allow a canny hacker access to core OS functionality through one of the inevitable security holes you provide with each release? Hmm?

Okay, enough of that, time to run it through some tests. So, load up my main work website, go to the toughest and slowest page it has and… huh. Right. IE9! Does so much more!! Look at all the pretty HTML5 it can do!!!

But apparently it doesn’t do Ajax, which means we can’t use it at work, which means it is utterly useless. Go Team Go.

So, right here is where I plug ChromePlus, a mashup that comes pre-loaded with IE-Tab right in the download. All the speed and security of Chrome AND the ability to run IE-required pages.

In conclusion, IE9 looks to be just what I expected it to be: several good ideas completely screwed by a company that refuses to pull it’s head out of it’s ass.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 14th, 2011 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.