okay now we’re there, on sunspider benchmark: IE9 beta and Firefox 4.0b7pre are as fast as Chrome 7 (well on my system). I get about 530ms for the three repeatedly. Opera remains faster, with something just above 400 ms. I actually once had a similar result with a version of Chrome but could never reproduce it.
Now to the facts, i.e. simple browsing experience: I read a few days ago that someone from Microsoft said that javascript performance didn’t represent, in terms of speed, more than 30% of overall browser speed performance, and this seems confirmed…hmm…in Firefox 4 ;D there’s no way it’s as fast as Chrome now, surfing on a few pages gives you an idea, it’s just slower, much slower.
At the opposite, and you may have noticed that I’ve been one of the worse “IE8 (and older) hater” on this forum, IE9 is fast, it’s just a rocket. I downloaded the beta yesterday, and honestly I’m impressed. Well…let’s say it once for all, the UI is a Google Chrome clone, in every way, i.e. not just the looks, technically too >>> startup is instant, and browsing is at least as fast as Chrome, this is amazing. I wasn’t expecting that from Microsoft; got the feeling for the first time since I use Windows that there’s a version of IE matching the OS quality standards. So I don’t care whether it mimicks Chrome, it does it well, + a couple of extra features for security (inprivate filtering, activeX improved protection…).
Just be warned, it’s a beta, I mean it’s really a beta >>> crashes ;D …often on flash sites. Also on my system it doesn’t detect the windows live sign in assistant, making direct feedback from the IE9 interface impossible, you get a prompt to install the assistant…that you already got ;D Last warning >>> it replaces IE8 completely. I f you don’t want it anymore, you must uninstall from “installed updates”, it won’t appear in the list of all programs.
here’s the link to get it:
http://windows.microsoft.com/ie9
ps: on a side note, but please don’t make this the central point of this thread, because it certainly is not, IE9, just like Windows Live Essentials 2011, is not compatible with Windows XP.