Internet Explorer 9 Beta Review:

[Tywais]

By Ed Bott | September 15, 2010, 7:32am PDT

Summary

Microsoft officially unveiled Internet Explorer 9 today. It is, without question, the most ambitious browser release Microsoft has ever undertaken, and despite the beta label it is an impressively polished product. Is it fast enough? Is it compatible enough? Is it cool enough to win back former IE users? Here’s my hands-on report.

ZDNet.com

[Supernova]

Download: Internet Explorer 9 beta

[Tywais]

Thanks Supernova for the download link.

More details from Wired.com.

Language specific versions for download from Microsoft Download site

[RKASA]

So if I want to use it I need vista or 7. Not happening this or next year. 2012 if we are still here - maybe.

[joncl]

be aware if you are a XP user

"Since you're running Windows XP, you won't be able to install Internet Explorer 9 unless you upgrade to a more recent version of Windows.

Find out what Windows 7 has to offer

Find out what Internet Explorer has to offer "

[Tywais]

So if I want to use it I need vista or 7. Not happening this or next year. 2012 if we are still here - maybe.

They said the end of this year or beginning of 2011 for final release, but since MS doesn't like to commit, 2012 may be about right.

Thanks for bringing up the XP issue, forgot to mention that. Does leave a large percentage of users stuck at 8. Statistics for August 2010 of OSes being used - WinXP 53.1%, Win7/Vista combined - 32.8%. Source: w3schools.com

[Pib]

Also keep in mind that if you install IE9 Beta now you won't be able to continue to use a previous version of IE like IE8, IE7, etc.. To use an earlier IE version you would have to uninstall IE9 and reload the previous version. You can still have another/second browser like FF or Chrome loaded, but not another version of IE.

Since the article said IE9 still has issues with some web pages (or should I say some pages have issues with IE9), you are probably going to still need a second browser loaded in order to properly view some webpages...like possibly your internet banking/financial web sites, some website important to you, etc. I have no doubt I will make the move from IE8 to IE9 once it goes final and webmasters have a little time to update their webpages, but for now I'll just let you "beta brave folks" venture into the IE9 water.