Internet Explorer 7 — Finally Available
After over a year of hype, Internet Explorer 7 is finally available. I bit the bullet and downloaded it today. I created a System Restore point on my computer before I installed it, just in case, but the install went remarkably smoothly. It did take 5 or 10 minutes to complete, however.
My first impressions of IE 7 are positive. It is fast, uses far less memory than FireFox, and the tabs work almost as well. However, after 20 minutes or so of searching, I haven’t found anything like the Ad Block Plus extension for Firefox (and not for free) and without the ability to easily block ads I find objectionable or annoying in their behavior, chances are I will not be using IE 7 much, no matter how nice it is otherwise.
I was very impressed with the installation process, however. Well, not its slow speed, but the fact that it left Firefox as my default browser and when I started IE 7 for the first time, it allowed me to select my default search instead of assuming I wanted Microsoft’s own Windows Live Search. (I selected Google.) The install did place an unwanted IE icon in my quicklaunch area without asking and turned on the “Language Bar” on my taskbar. The icon was easy to get rid of, drag it to the trash. Removing the Language Bar (which is apparently used to switch between keyboard language layouts and may be far more useful to those with non-US keyboards) required right clicking on the taskbar, selecting “Toolbars” from the menu and deselecting “Language Bar” on the Toolbars submenu.
Will IE 7 replace Firefox for me? Probably not, but from using it for an afternoon, I can say that it has been modernized enough to be a very nice browser again. I love the low memory footprint compared to Firefox, but I miss all the features from my favorite Firefox extensions and I am annoyed by the lack of any simple, free ad blocker with the abilities of Ad Block Plus.
IE 7 is worth the time it takes to upgrade just to replace the aging IE 6 and all of its security problems on your system. Of course, IE 7 will have security issues of its own, but the base code is modernized and it displays standards-based web sites much better than IE 6. In fact, Microsoft really wants Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2003 users to have IE 7: they will be pushing it out as a “critical upgrade” in November.
Rating: 4.0
Operating System: Windows XP SP 2 and Windows 2003
License: Commercial Freeware
Price: Free
Version: 7.0
Web Site: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/
[tags]Windows XP, Internet Explorer 7, IE 7, Browser, Web Browser[/tags]