Minou at French Tidbits is not thrilled with the latest browser from Bill. To be fair, she could not give it a full evaluation because it’s too bloated to run on her computer.
It’s looking like the newest offerings from Microsoft are not going to happy with less than a 2 gigahertz processor, 1 gigabyte of memory, a 100-gigabyte hard drive, and a DVD drive.
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7 comments
If I had to guess, based on what I’ve read… I don’t have any hands-on IE7 experience yet, though I expect to do so within days not weeks… Minou has a problem with viruses, worms or adware. IE7 is known not to install cleanly in the face of such problems. Another common obstacle is not having Windows XP upgraded to SP2.
Why am I even concerned with IE7? Because Microsoft is about to thrust it upon everyone, willy-nilly, in November, and I just spent three months crafting an AJAX web app that works (as required by spec) in “a recent IE browser,” i.e., IE6. Supposedly, IE7 is more nearly standards-compliant, and I’ve taken the trouble to keep the app working in Firefox 1.5.0.7 as well, just to be on the safe side, so I may luck out. Or I may not. I’ve read that some more advanced web sites do not work properly in IE7.
I am so exasperated with Microsoft’s most recent heavy-handed approach (yes, it’s gotten worse lately) that I am seriously considering buying and installing VMWare on my laptop so I can install and run Ubuntu Linux side by side with Windows. Do you have experience with either of those products?
Ubuntu Linux has a solid reputation. I don’t use dual boot products because of the nature of some of my contracts, so I haven’t tried any of them. Most of the time in addition to my own equipment I will have a box from a client for loading and testing their software.
I don’t trust Microsoft because of the problems they caused at the college where I have been giving seminars. The upgrade to XP was a total disaster, and the new “software license” violated state purchasing regulations.
The only complaint I’ve read about dealt with a site that was using some IE only features that don’t work the same way under IE 7. I have noticed that since I switched to Firefox I’ve had to correct a few bad habits that I picked up using preview in my HTML editor. The preview uses IE and it ignores a number of common mistakes, like missing end tags, that Firefox doesn’t.
I have never understood how Microsoft can get away with not providing backward compatibility with its own products.
Well, I know my computer does not fall in the category you mention. I guess I won’t be running the newest version any time soon.
OWL, think again. Unless you are running a Mac, or take extreme measures to prevent it, Microsoft will use Windows Update to install IE7 on your computer within a month. BOHICA…
Bryan, thanks for the advice. I’ve encountered Microsoft’s equivalent of VMWare… good only for multiple Windows machines, I believe… and had only one problem with it, but that one was a doozy. The current virtual-machine products are a far cry from the old dual-boot mechanisms, which I, like your clients, mistrust for a variety of reasons. Most people, including my current boss who does development in both Windows and Linux, speak positively of VMWare… and he runs it on his laptop. I’m still pondering it.
Seeing something working on a machine belonging to a friend or acquaintance is better than trying to decide from technical reviews.
I had dual boot working a few years ago using the utility that came from Red Hat with Linux, and Win95, but it was very unhappy with something in Win98. That was an installation on a friend’s box, but it wasn’t mission critical.
OWL, they will download whatever they want on Windows XP machines.
I’ve been on Firefox at home for … I don’t know how long, but I really like it. Coming to work means I have to “dumb down” to the vagaries of IE.
I moved from Netscape to Firefox as I was never happy with IE. I keep IE patched because several pieces of software I use are tied to IE for their documentation, especially MS Office.