July 03, 2009

IE8: This one's for spew

Apparently Microsoft will stop at nothing to foist IE8 upon us. Cringely dissects Redmond's latest gag-inducing ads

I hate to be constantly beating a dead browser, but news about Internet Explorer 8 keeps coming up, kind of like a day-old fish taco at Earl's House of Chowder.

It seems Microsoft will stop at nothing to get people to try IE8. First, they published a "get the facts" comparison chart showing how -- surprise! -- IE8 bests Firefox and Chrome in virtually every way. (Note: Whenever anyone from Microsoft says "get the facts," the first thing you should get is your hip boots and waders, because it's going to pile up deep and fast.) I'm still scratching my head over the "Performance" blurb in that chart:

Knowing the top speed of a car doesn't tell you how fast you can drive in rush hour. To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video. This one's also a tie.

Right. If anyone out there can explain that one to me, please send me a note.

[ Cringely isn't joking, either -- Microsoft's IE8 "get the facts" campaign does get it wrong. | For the real facts, check out IE8 vs. Firefox 3.5: The browser wars continue. ]

But that's not all. They're dangling $10K cash prizes to Aussies willing to go spelunking down undah using only their browser. They've offered to donate eight (count 'em, eight) meals to a food bank for every download of IE8. And they've launched a series of "funny" video ads starring Superman-turned-pitchman Dean Cain.

This is where things get dicey.

As first noted by The Technologizer's Harry McCracken (and quickly followed up by virtually everybody else with a blog), there's one ad in particular that's gotten a fair amount of attention. It involves an ordinary looking housewife who borrows her husband's laptop, looks at his browser history, and suddenly starts spewing projectile vomit all over the kitchen in full living technicolor, like Ozzy Osbourne after three days of nothing but beer and bat heads.

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Elfish 3-Jul-09 7:44am
Just what I needed to start my morning off. Bleh...
CodeZombie 3-Jul-09 8:16am
2 replies
Um, okay, Cringe, I'm a little perplexed. I haven't done the google search you proposed but what on earth possesses you or anyone else to type in "two girls, one cup" as something to search for? I couldn't have thought of that one in a million years.
ctryon 6-Jul-09 5:52am
Fortunately, you can find it on Wikipedia, so you don't have to worry about the corporate Web filters flagging you, or about seeing actual gross pictures. (The description is bad enough.)
Martin Heller 6-Jul-09 6:23am
I accidentally clicked on that when it was given ad space on Facebook last year. I didn't quite lose my lunch, but then again I killed it after about 5 seconds because it was clear I was going to spew if I kept watching. I also flagged the ad on Facebook as offensive. The ad was pulled within a week, but I strongly doubt that I was the only one who flagged it.
nwjh 3-Jul-09 9:51am
Actually, if you do the search and just check out the Wikipedia entry, that's disgusting enough! Yet darling hubby seems remarkably unperturbed by both the original website and the wife's reaction. Could this be the level of sophistication expected in users by MS? Alternative webpages that she actually saw (given that she hardly did anything to bring up history, etc.) might have been: their bank statement after updating to IE8 and Vista, plus all the hardware add-ons required; an e-mail from work (hers and/or hubby's) announcing the next round of lay-offs; a food/cooking site with really delectable images and recipes, but she's pregnant and this is just morning sickness; or an e-mail announcing how much she'll actually get per share from her {pick a collapsed bank} portfolio. BTW, projectile vomiting is far more spectacular than this. This is just simple regurgitation. If she was projectile vomiting, she'd be hitting the walls with enough force to break some of that china. And tinned Russian salad is much better as fake vomit; hers looks like it was just watery oatmeal!
DoubtingThomas 3-Jul-09 11:07am

No IE 8 for Mac? I guess we Mac users are lucky :)

CodeZombie 3-Jul-09 6:40pm
1 reply
By the way, I'm using IE8 on XP and I've had no problems with it. As they say, your mileage may vary, but so far it's working fine for me. But, of course, mine is an unpopular opinion around here. Heaven forbid that someone should actually be happy with a MS product. That being said, no, I'm not a MS fanboy or a shill for them. I don't like everything that MS does. Vista is crap. I tried it for a good six months before giving up on it and buying a copy of XP Pro. I'm still using Office 2000 at home because I can't see any reason to upgrade when I don't use all the features of what I'm using right now. But sometimes MS does get it right and I like IE8.
rcprimak 5-Jul-09 8:27pm

I used IE8 a few times at my local Public Library, and also report no problems. If I hadn't looked at the Title Bar, I might never have noticed that it was not IE7. Once I did notice, I switched to InPrivate Browsing Mode, as this was a Public Computer after all.

At home and on my laptop, I use Firefox 3.5. Not really much faster than 3.0, but I like to customize (with Add-ons and Personas), and NoScript beats the pants off of trying to lock down IE's ActiveX Controls. I also usually use the Private Browsing feature in Firefox 3.5, but the Infoworld.com web site doesn't work very well without cookies enabled, so here I am InPublic, as it were.

davemac 4-Jul-09 8:49am
Note to self --- take no more dares from Cringe.
tcapun 6-Jul-09 1:10pm
Whatever Dean Cain is saying starts with Harry/Hairy, and is followed by very markedly F and V words which disqualifies any possible description of the 2 G's with a Cup and the A and S words.
BigRonG 7-Jul-09 6:16am
Another thing that you receive with IE 8 is the constant harassment of messages on the settings. If you import your settings IE8 is not satified. You must 'accept' (i.e. export to MS) those settings to avoid the constant 'chose a search partner (again MS promotes Bing)' messages. Once MS has your info, they are happy but will you be...
flash63 8-Jul-09 1:01am
IE 8 - a note of caution i use a lot of ms products and like to early adopt so with a prety high spec laptop i was happy enough to try IE8. Poor decision - as one correspondent says IE8 pesters you, and i mean, really pesters you with settings options, promoting its own software and serach engines - its a complete pain. On top of that it was agonisingly slow, crashed my laptop [ im using XP - cant face vista for many of the same issues!] would not load mnay pages properly and became completely unmanageable - really MA have not thought about what the customer wants at all here - they have just thought about them sleves and the sooner they start producing products we want the sooner Google will start losing to them! Then i tried to uninstall it - blimey! Not easy but i managed it eventually and instantly IE7 is a world better. i also tried firefox for comparison and it was seamless and quick. My advice - do not use IE8 until they sort it out - its a poor product.

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