Don't upgrade to IE8 just yet

I'm usually not too fussy with internet browsers. Most of the time I use the default Internet Explorer browser on Windows. Just couldn't be bothered too much to use Mozilla, Opera, Chrome or all sorts of other browsers out there. Of course on a Mac I would use Safari, but somehow I just don't fancy the Safari on Windows.

If you are a regular user of IE browser, you might have been tempted to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) as has been widely promoted on the web. Or if you do set your Windows Update on automatic, you might have been alerted to uprgade to IE8 in one of it's regular update.

I suggest you to hold off your thoughts to upgrading to IE8, well at least wait a couple of months or so before you do.

I accidentally updated all my Windows Update packs, including IE8. So after realising that I have done just that, decided to test IE8. Well the experience wasn't really that pleasing. They all said that IE8 would compliment Vista. So let's see.

Firstly, eventhough IE8 do have some nice features, my CPU usage was revving at an all time high! I found out from Task Manager that it was due to Windows Sidebar applications. What?? How can IE8 be messing with Windows Sidebar causing the CPU operate near it's maximum capacity?

After browsing the web, in a lot of forums, it is mentioned that IE8 does have conflicts with Windows Sidebar if the DPI Scale settings is not at the normal 96 count. So since my DPI settings was not at 96, apparently that caused my CPU to really spike. But if I changed it back to 96, then everything would be alright.

But I'm just not used to staring at my screen at 96 DPI scales... it's too tiny. So rather that adjusting, I just reverted back to using IE7.

You can easily uninstall IE8 by going to Control Panel, Program and Features, View Installed Updates, then you just uninstall Windows Explorer 8. You would then need to reboot. You are back to IE7.

Of course none of this problem would arise if one is to use Mozilla/Firefox. So another advantage of not using IE there...