Leo Notenboom, owner and operator of the popular tech support site Ask Leo! is advising his readers to avoid Microsoft's recently released Internet Explorer version 8.
The most common complaints, Notenboom says, are from people who've installed IE8 and thereafter begin suffering significant system slowdowns and instability. "It's a question I get regularly," he says, "people have installed IE8 and report various issues immediately thereafter."
The problem is compounded by what appear to be issues reverting back to version 7 after IE8 has been installed. Notenboom continues, "I'd be much more confident advising people to give IE8 a try if I didn't also have a fairly steady stream of problem reports relating to the uninstall. While Microsoft does provide good uninstall instructions, what I'm hearing from consumers is that once again while the instructions work for many, perhaps even most, they fail in enough cases for it to be a problem. One you install IE8 you just can't count on being able to cleanly uninstall it. A number of people are left with residual problems after uninstalling IE8; problems that they didn't have before."
"The only completely safe way to try IE8 today is to perform a full system image backup prior to installing, and be prepared to restore to that backup should IE8 not work. The problem, of course, is that while everyone agrees that backing up is important, many people don't, or don't backup to the degree required for that total system recovery to work."
Even after taking this position, Notenboom remains optimistic: "this actually isn't anything new. IE7 had its growing pains when it was released, and that eventually settled down. I'm certain that over time IE8 will become a safe enough upgrade to recommend. I just can't recommend it today."
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Leo A. Notenboom owns and operates Ask Leo!, a free technical question and answer sites that helps over a million visitors each month get answers to their tech questions. http://ask-leo.com
