Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 For Windows 7 321
An anonymous reader writes "Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is out. Windows 8 may suck but now you can at least enjoy (most of) that version's Internet Explorer. IE10 for Win7, originally not planned, has seen the light of day after all — four months after it debuted in Windows 8. It is available via Windows Update as an optional update; however, if you've already installed a pre-release version, it will be updated automatically as an 'important' update. IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update to bring some Windows 8 APIs to the more mature Windows, and it will not feature embedded Adobe Flash as the Windows 8 version does (use the plug-in version from Adobe, as usual, instead)."
So? (Score:4, Interesting)
last decade when active X came out and the promise of applications in IE, i thought it was cool.
for years nothing happened except for flash
i'm perfectly happy with chrome now and web apps like feedly, evernote and others. IE is still in the stone age of the internet where you have to visit a web site to read the content
I actually almost like Windows 8 (Score:4, Interesting)
It's really sad that Microsoft screwed up so badly with the whole UI formerly known as Metro. And the licensing. And, well, pretty much everything beyond the core OS.
I bought the upgrade as a cheap way to get the latest Windows running on my MBP, but the installation was an amazing hassle. They don't tell you up front that you're not allowed to do a clean install, so you have to run through registry hoops and calls to the Microsoft Licensing hotline thingy just to get your legal copy of windows working properly.
Once I got it installed, I found a start menu replacement. I ended up spending the 5 bucks for Start8 by Stardock cause it's head and shoulders better than the freely available ones. It lets you bypass Metro completely unless you specifically want to use it, and from that point on I've actually really liked Windows 8. It's wonderfully snappy, and it's understated window dressing is a refreshing change from the kaleidoscopic orgy of previous versions of Windows.
For the cheap upgrade price, I'm not TOO upset, but there is no way in hell I would put up with this crap if I was paying full price. I'd sooner do without.
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought the "embedded" Flash of IE is similar to Chrome's embedded Flash. Meaning Microsoft maintains its own build of Flash like Google maintains its own Flash. So it's up to Microsoft to fix any security issues and not rely on Adobe to release a patch to the consumer. So it could be a good thing like Chrome or a terrible thing like IE6.
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking "embedded" actually means "included", like how chrome included flash player instead of using the plugin version.
This is a good thing since updates to flash player happens at the same time as updates to the browser (in the case of IE, it's handled by windows update) and it's easier to update and therefore more likely for critical flash updates to be applied.
Not sure how different "embedded" vs plugin is for security.
Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Interesting)
I can still build software for 2.2 if I want. I could backport any fix I like.
I am not actually expecting them to backport something to XP, just pointing out that until recently they held IE10 from Windows 7 for no good reason.
Re:Can we have the story with the additude? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do consulting work and have to work with, and share files and working environments with clients. My previous laptop was a Dell XPS M1330 which I downgraded to Windows XP Professional. I hated Vista and continued to use Windows XP until last June when I replaced my laptop with a Lenovo W520 running Windows 7 Professional. I've played around with Windows 8 a bit - my son's computer has it, but I don't see anything that would cause me to update my laptop that is less than a year old. Likewise with MS Office. I used 2003 for the longest time, and quite frankly, would have been content to continue using it except for 2 reasons. 1) Clients started providing materials in MSO 2007 formats, and 2) I upgraded my old versions of Visio and MS Project to 2010, and it caused instability and incompatibility when embedding Visio and Project objects in Word 2003 and Powerpoint 2003 documents.
The switch from Windows XP to Windows 7 was relatively transparent. The switch from Office 2003 to Office 2010 wasn't too difficult. I don't find the ribbon quite so annoying anymore and it it nice to be able to Save As PDF rather than printing to a virtual PDF driver. I don't know what or when the next MS Office release is, but I can't see myself upgrading unless they change file formats again, and client documents force me to upgrade. Windows 8 is a whole new UI, and from what I have seen of it, I'm decidedly meh on the whole thing. I don't have (and have no plans to get) Windows Surface tablet - I have a Samsung tablet and an iPad2, so I don't see much benefit in a unified UI. Windows 9 is due in 2015 (if not delayed) - that is probably about the time frame I will need to replace my laptop, so I'll defer the decision until then. Hopefully by then, third parties will have a Windows 7 compatibility shiv for Windows 8 as I am usually loath to adopt versions of Windows prior to the first service pack.
Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong.
How is it "wrong"? How is the fact that itunes 11 won't install on Leopard in any way even the slightest bit different from what Microsoft is doing? Both companies just want to move on and not support the old stuff.
Apple doesn't artifically limit it.
Yes, actually they do. Hell there have been OS X upgrades that they have simply DECIDED not to let run on older Apple hardware.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26562/leopardassist [macupdate.com]
LeopardAssist is a simple tool to install Leopard on older, unsupported Power Macs.
"It bypasses the 867 MHz processor check in the Leopard installer to allow systems that don't meet the requirements to complete installation. It achieves this by temporarily faking the clock speed in the device tree, changing it to 933MHz, and then launching the Leopard Installer. No modified Leopard DVD's, no hardware hacks or tweaks, just a one-time run application. (Much like XPostFacto)"
It doesn't get to be any more of an artificial limit than that. 900MHz = "Ok" 800MHz = "No you can't install it".
There are a number of other similar OSX upgrade related jerk moves like this over the years.
What could be more artificial than that?
They make it clear they move on and don't support old stuff because that's what they want to do not because it's physically impossible.
Same as microsoft.
Microsoft doesn't want to support directX on XP. They said so. Nobody ever claimed it would be "impossible". Ditto for Internet Explorer. They could support IE10 on XP but they don't want to, and said so. But at least in those cases it would be actual work to get them running on the older system.
Apple is the only one that completely artificially blocks you from running new software on old OSes, or new OSes on older hardware. Safari 5 was artificially exclusive to Tiger. Itunes restrictions have also been pretty artificial. I think my favorite is itunes because you needed the latest itunes to support new iphones, but itunes only supports the latest macs.
My brother got burned by an iphone, forcing him to update itunes, forcing him to update his OSX, forcing him to buy a new computer. And he wasn't running a decrepit old computer either; it was meeting his needs just fine.
It was rather ironic that itunes supported Windows XP PC which came out years before his Mac computer. (Granted it required XPSP2... but XPSP2 is a free upgrade that worked on any computer that ran XP. vs OSX updates which were not free and which do not run on any Mac made in 2002 onwards with nothing more than a (optional) ram upgrade.
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:4, Interesting)
never opened up an API for Windows Update so there could be a single update system instead of every OEM and software company piling on their own update systems.
If an update comes from Windows Update and it does negative things to the box, people blame Microsoft. Why would they increase the probability of this happening? They want Windows Update to only deliver safe and advisable updates.