Win XP won't dine on MS browser IE 9

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 15 March 2011 19:23

Your IT - Home IT

IE9 is here - in final form at last, as XP lovin' users watch it just zoom right past. Windows 7 gets to see a web of beauty spun, but for XP users all - it won't even get a run!

The final version of Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer 9 or IE9, has finally arrived for Windows Vista and Windows 7 PCs, but not Windows XP, after a previous release candidate and beta versions before it.

In that time, Google's Chrome has gone through several revisions, Firefox continues its march towards version 4, Opera continues to flourish and is even being built into some of Sony's latest 2011 TVs to enable browsing right through the TV - sans PC, iPad 2 or anything else.

Apple's Safari continues its Trojan-like march through the installation of iTunes and the popularity of its iDevices, but Microsoft's Internet Explorer is still a force to be reckoned with.

Microsoft says IE9 is 'designed to bring web sites front and centre' in Windows 7, which means that web apps and sites benefit from the hardware acceleration capabilities of your computer, can display smoother and better graphical experiences and benefit from desktop app-like performance.

IE9 also lets you place links to your favourite sites directly on the Windows taskbar, adding to the web app as desktop app illusion.

IE9 certainly benefits from the hardware acceleration capabilities and will undoubtedly be a popular download with Windows 7 users and those still using Vista, but the competition hasn't been sleeping, working on equipping their own browsers on hardware acceleration too.

Still, Microsoft now has a new browser to promote, new capabilities to promote it with, and more competition that ever before in the browser market.

With over 40 million downloads of the beta, IE9 certainly had to be bold to be taken notice of, but it is a shame Microsoft has decided to make IE9 unavailable for computers running Windows XP.

As Ovum reports, 67% of corporate desktops are still running XP, with Wikipedia's Feb 2011 stats showing 41.15% of all operating systems recorded are still running XP. That a lot of Microsoft users, most of whom have presumably paid to be Microsoft users, who aren't getting the benefits that IE9 delivers.

With the choice of browsers available, IE9 alone is not a compelling enough reason to upgrade on its own, but leaving XP out of the compatibility list is simply an obvious gambit to speed up as many upgrades or outright purchases of new Windows 7 equipped machines as possible. While consumers are easier upgrade targets, especially at today's low prices for desktop and notebook computers, corporates and other organisations take longer to replace their fleets - while seeing potential future alternatives from the world of tablets evolve before their eyes.

Indeed, while Microsoft launches its new IE9 browser on what is the ides of March, is it a sign of doom for Microsoft's hopes of a bigger browser market share, or a sign of doom for its competitors?

 

Perhaps it's a sign of doom for desktop computing as we know it, with even Ovum pointing towards the browser wars migrating to smartphones and tablets.

What else of IE9's improvements, from who is already using them to whose technologies control the screens of the future... on page two. Please read on!