Near-final IE 8 test build ready for download

On January 26, Microsoft made available to the public for download a near-final test build of its Internet Explorer (IE) 8 browser.
The IE 8 Release Candidate (RC) 1 is the last public build Microsoft expects to deliver before releasing the final version of the product, which will be available as a standalone download and part of Windows 7. (Microsoft will continue to make smaller private builds of the browser available to select testers in the coming weeks/months.)
Microsoft has made the IE 8 RC1 bits for 32-bit Vista, 64-bit Vista and Windows XP available on its Download Center for anyone interested in trying out the newest browser build.
The RC 1 build includes performance tweaks, compatibility enhancers and a few other fairly minor changes to the Beta 2 version of the product Microsoft made available to testers last summer. Microsoft officials are calling the IE 8 RC 1 build “platform-complete,” meaning that developers and users should expect no more programming- or user-interface changes in the product from here on out.
What’s changed since Beta 2?
The compatibility list enhancements: Microsoft is going to provide users who want it with a list of 2,000 sites that will automatically be viewed by default in compatibility view without users having to press the compatibility view button. (Microsoft will update this list every two months to reflect sites that are updated to be compatible with IE 8, officials said).
A new ClickJacking prevention option: Developers will be able to add a tage in a page header that will help detect and prevent click-jacking. According to Microsoft, IE 8 “will detect sites that insert the tag and give users a new error screen indicating that the content host has chosen not to allow their content to be framed, while giving users the option to open the content in a new window.”
Changes to the Smart Address bar: Besides matching URLs in a user’s site history the bar now also better matches titles in their history and favorites.
Other changes include performance tweaks that will speed up page loading; changes to the Instant Search Box (to include a “quick pick menu” at the bottom, so users can toggle between their favorite search suggestions from different search providers); full support for CSS 2.1; and a renaming of InPrivate Blocking (part of “porn mode”) to InPrivate Filtering. With IE 8 RC1, users can manually adjust the threshold between 3 and 30 in InPrivate Filtering settings. A full list of what’s changed in IE 8 since the beta is here.
As Microsoft acknowledged recently, IE 8 RC1 won’t work on the Windows 7 Beta; Windows 7 testers who want to try the RC need to run it in a virtual machine.

Windows kicks Linux to the curb

Gosh, that didn’t take long!Last July Linux had a huge opportunity to beat Windows in the red-hot netbook market (see Linux for housewives. XP for geeks. ). But faster than I’d expected Microsoft has kicked Linux to the curb, claiming an 80% attach rate for netbooks.
Windows 7 is the final nail in the desktop Linux market’s coffin. Unless Microsoft gets stupid on pricing, it is game over for Linux netbook market share.
Linux, we hardly knew ye - on the desktop, anyway.
It is tough to compete with “free”Not that Microsoft got off easy. Their 5,000 man layoff is a direct result of the cost of competing with Linux - their client business revenue slid $335 million.
Ballmer’s layoffs mean this is no one-time blip. Linux has changed the competitive landscape in a way Apple never could - after all Mac OS costs twice as much as Windows. And this is just a taste: the economics going forward are brutal.
The birth of free Windows?Windows 7 will run fine on netbooks - a smart move. But how to price it?
Linux is free, and as Moore’s Law drives down netbook prices, any difference will become more obvious. For the several billion people in the developing world, even $20 for Windows 7 may be too much.
If the Window’s netbook share drops below 70%, Microsoft will have no choice but to offer it for free to netbook OEMs. Sure, some nominal dollar figure will attach, but after marketing and developer support costs are figured in, it will be a wash.
This is as it should be: operating systems are becoming commodities, like a cell phone OS. The real innovation will be in netbook pricing models and new applications.
The Storage Bits takeLinux has lost the fight for netbook dominance, but it has inflicted significant pain on Windows. Microsoft faces a do-or-die defense of the Windows monopoly which will no doubt be successful.
The important fact is that for the first time in decades, Microsoft is playing defense, not offense. This is good for everyone, as even a 10% Linux share is enough for a future Linux breakout if Microsoft fails to stay current or raises prices.
Apple gets to watch Linux and Windows fight. If and when Apple offers a netbook, the OS will be an integral part of the package, not a choice. And they won’t be competing on price.

Desktop Unix: MacOS X and SUSE Linux

As regular readers know my general preference in making IT decisions is to keep the hardware and software as simple as possible while putting the real focus on empowering the people using it. In general, therefore, I see “the right way” as one that centralizes processing for simplicity while decentralizing control for empowerment - but sometimes there’s no sensible way to meet user needs without giving them laptops and the question then is, which ones you should get?

All three of the main OS candidates: MacOS X, Novell’s “Sousa Linicks” and Microsoft’s Windows Vista run on pretty much the same hardware and run broadly comparable applications suites, so the decision must ultimately come down to which one best balances cost versus productivity in your applications area.

Two of these are Unix desktop implementations - as are both outlier options: Solaris and OpenBSD - making Windows Vista the odd man out from an OS technology perspective.

Put them side by side and I think you’ll notice some consequential differences too: MacOS X and Linux (specifically Novell’s latest “enterprise desktop”) have a very different feel to them than Vista does.

In the ideal experiment to see this, you get three OS advocates to put their favorites on similar Apple hardware and then watch as they load email from a common server, find and watch a video from my favorite hot air site and bring three working documents up in separate, side by side, windows.

That’s ideal, but of course most people don’t just happen to have three identical x86 Macs laying around - so try the next best thing: recruit two friends favoring whichever two desktops you don’t, and go do as much of the trial as you can get away with at your favorite local x86 shop: Office Depot, BestBuy, whatever.

It’s worth doing, particularly if you’re a Windows advocate, because it’s absolutely eye-opening. By itself Windows Vista (or XP) looks decent enough: you click, it does - something; the fonts work, the colors look nice, and IE comes up. But, put it right between the two Unix versions and you’ll see that the two Unix desktops, although very different, share a responsiveness, a directness of focus, and a simplicity of operation, that are completely missing in the Windows products - showing Windows Vista as a kind of click hungry hippopotamus in a tutu that simply doesn’t belong on stage with the other two.

Windows 7 will, at least according to the Microsoft press, fix this: recapturing XP’s place in the competition - although even two minutes with the latest Linux desktop should convince you that if Microsoft were showing that to their focus groups as their Next Generation product they wouldn’t have to fake the enthusiasm. Back on planet earth, however, it’s hard to think of an argument for buying a Microsoft desktop that doesn’t start and end with: “because we already have Microsoft…”

If you’re halfway objective about it, that leaves you to choose between the latest Linux desktop and MacOS X for your users - a choice most people will, I think, find to be an absolute no brainer.

For those who put a premium on cost savings, Linux is the no brainer option: it runs on cheaper hardware and you get it for free or nearly free and with, or without, paid support.

For those who put a premium on user productivity, MacOS X is the no brainer option: it’s more matter of fact than Novell’s new GUI skin and packaging, and mostly just stays out of the way of knowledgeable users. In fact, for many it meets the IT ideal: it works so well, they don’t know it’s there or doing anything to help them - they just click and expect it to work; because, well, it just does.

That’s a different horses for different courses situation: my own bottom line is that a few hundred bucks per laptop is meaningless when set against even a small improvement in user productivity - so I’m picking the Mac. You, on the other hand, may have higher volume, lower complexity, requirements for which cost becomes the decisive criterion - and so pick Linux.

It’s that choice, I think, that forms the real bottom line here: they’re both good choices, and they’re genuinely different - offering different values to different people.

And it’s been awhile since we’ve had a real choice, so how great is that?