IE 7, Dead on Arrival

I read the news of Microsoft’s public release of Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 and rushed to download the software and install it. Now, I'm running a Toshiba satellite with Intel centrino Duo 1.8GHz  with IGB of RAM.

As soon as I started the new IE browser (after a reboot etc of course), I had a weird feeling this wasn't right! The User interface is really nothing impressive (I've been using firefox forever) and the tab browsing was HORRIBLE!!!.

Once I try to tab browse, even before entering the new URL, the browser crashed.

Being me, I kept on,  only to  realize the futility of my effort after many tries.

Then I simply fell back to the usual one page per browser instance (the old IE way), but even this doesn't seem well thought out. Every time I try to load a none-msn url, the browser simply crashes.

I tried google.com and several other pages, all with the same result. The camel that broke my back was when i noticed the cpu state when the browser crashed : 100% !!! Memory usage 83%. What a hog!

Well, I am hoping there's a simple way to uninstall this new beast from my windows xp media center edition, or I may simply have to forget IE on this computer. Period!

Microsoft advices beta installers not to install this version on a production server. Yeah right! Betas have seen better delivery in the past.

I think Microsoft should imply pull the plug on this experiment and wait until the have a usable product before leaking it to the public , even as a beta version.

If on the other hand they don't , then my guess is that firefox market share will simply grow on the strength of this Microsoft misstep.

Whatever happened to the impressive tab-browsing capability in IE 6 that you get when you install the MSN toolbar? Were the product developers so far apart, they couldn't share ideas or best practices?

All the features and functionalities being touted in IE 7 are already in play as add-on to IE 6 for a while now, its really amazing how the Redmond folks couldn't repeat their successful feats from their own previous work.

Anyway, if you're planning to download and install IE 7 beta 2. My advice is "JUST LET IT GO!" Its not worth the hassle.

Maybe when they release beta 10?

If you must see for your self though, please, please, and please make sure you install only on a machine that is purely for experimental purpose. Since Firefox is still squeaky with some website and you may have to fall back to IE in those instances, you do not want to install IE 7 on a computer you use for any useful purpose. It simply does not work!