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Internet Explorer The Internet Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows

MS To Slip IE8 Into Vista and XP Through OEMs 289

Posted by kdawson from the for-our-own-good dept.
crazyeyes writes "Microsoft says it's 'optional,' but they are already planning to slip Internet Explorer 8 into all Windows Vista/XP PCs by March. MS claims that IE8 will offer better performance and security. But what about unwanted stuff like 'Monetization opportunities (for OEMs)' and 'These services will be used (by OEMs) to deliver brand exposure... to the users'?"
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MS To Slip IE8 Into Vista and XP Through OEMs More

MS To Slip IE8 Into Vista and XP Through OEMs

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  • IE has had these for ages (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot&uberm00,net> on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:28PM (#26892787) Homepage Journal

    Ever notice the "Internet Explorer provided by Dell" title bar?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by plankrwf ( 929870 )

      Hmmm... No, mine says: 'Slashdot | MS To Slip IE8 Into Vista and XP Trough OEMs - Mozilla Firefox'.

      Oh... Wait...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cbhacking ( 979169 )

      It's a single registry key, easy to change. I've seen it used by everything from OEMs to non-malicious viruses.

    • Re:IE has had these for ages (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RonnyJ ( 651856 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:06PM (#26893459)

      Recently the standard of Slashdot articles about Microsoft has taken a huge nosedive, any opportunity to bash them seems to be taken. It used to be mainly misleading summaries, but nowadays anything with an anti-Microsoft slant, even something basically made up or down to the incompetence of the submitter, seems to get posted.

      http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/06/1544207 [slashdot.org] - bashing Microsoft for letting you download Microsoft software on another PC besides the one you intend to use it on.
      http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/16/2259257 [slashdot.org] - the worst example I've seen - unfounded, unproven allegations with no substance whatsoever.

      • Re:IE has had these for ages (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RonnyJ ( 651856 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:54PM (#26894271)

        As an addition, even those who have serious issues with Microsoft would do best to ignore these 'stories' and even perhaps make a stand against them themselves.

        Posting half-truths, exaggerations and downright untruths discredits Slashdot probably more than it does Microsoft. If Slashdot focused on legitimate problems and grievances, and actually verified the accuracy of what they post, it would give those legitimate grievances far more weight than Slashdot carries right now.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

        Recently the standard of Slashdot articles about Microsoft has taken a huge nosedive

        You're completely correct. The second link (the "story" from yesterday) was obviously the rant of a Windows luser who didn't have a clue what they were doing. The fact that it actually got accepted and posted to Slashdot was somehow both unbelievable and sadly also not that surprising.

        Oh, that's right! Both of your examples were posted by the worthless "editor" kdawson. Since we can't do anything else, I suggest everyone wh

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Rary ( 566291 )

          Since we can't do anything else, I suggest everyone who is sick of this crap exclude articles posted by kdawson in their preferences

          For years I've left my preferences untouched, preferring to just take the good with the bad, but now I have finally resorted to filtering kdawson's articles out of the front page.

          For new Slashdot users, however, I wouldn't recommend this tactic. If you're looking to quickly build up your karma, there's no better way than to just browse the kdawson stories and be the first to point out how horribly distorted and flawed they are.

          (assuming, of course, that kdawson isn't just a puppet Taco uses to post the asinine anti-Microsoft stuff which always gets plenty of adviews)

          Allegedly, "kdawson" is this guy [technologyfront.com].

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Gees, but if you but if you block the articles you wont be able to complain about them, now how is that going to work for you? Personally the by line in the heading doesn't seem to say much at all except to provide a couple of quotes from the web page. So it would seem your complaint is with that article or perhaps the use of the word monetize.

          Maybe you will be happier here http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/exec/ozzie/03-05-08MIX.mspx [microsoft.com], talk about monetize on the brain, the word appears 12 times, PR jarg

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jurily ( 900488 )

      Ever notice the "Internet Explorer provided by Dell" title bar?

      I have a Dell laptop, but there's no such thing on it. Of course the first thing I did with it was fdisk.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by syousef ( 465911 )

      Ever notice the "Internet Explorer provided by Dell" title bar?

      Hey mine says "Internet Explorer provided by l33tHax0r69". Does that mean I have an older version or something?

  • Rule of thumb. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:28PM (#26892805) Journal
    Anybody who uses the word "monetize" or any variant thereof, is not to be trusted.

    • Because profit = evil?

      Seriously?

      • Re:Rule of thumb. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:36PM (#26892943) Journal
        Profit isn't evil; but when people start spouting grotesque pseudowords referring to it, I get nervous. "Incentivize" is another troublesome one.

        • Re:Rule of thumb. (Score:5, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:41PM (#26893043)

          Profit isn't evil; but when people start spouting grotesque pseudowords referring to it, I get nervous. "Incentivize" is another troublesome one.

          Tell me about it. This guy on the street offered to galvanize me for free. I thought, hey, that sounds cool. The next thing I know I've got a face full of hot zinc and I'm getting tazered.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Locke2005 ( 849178 )
            I thought only steel could be galvanized... say, you haven't been though any cosmic radiation storms or bitten by any robotic insects lately, have you?

            Oh wait... people can be galvanized, just not the way that you said. "galvanize: to startle into sudden activity; stimulate." Yeah, I think I was pretty galvanized last time I went to the strip club.

        • grotesque pseudowords

          Darn, I just ran out of mod points. You deserve +1 for that.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Lord Ender ( 156273 )

          So if I say "doing X would provide incentive to do Y" I am just fine, but if I say "X would incentivize Y" I am grotesque?

          I don't think so. Your insistence on using tedious phrases when equally meaningful, but much more convenient terms exist is sort of pathetic, though.

          • I wouldn't call you grotesque.. I might call you dub-ya - oh wait... nevermind...

          • "Incite" (Score:5, Informative)

            by XanC ( 644172 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:29PM (#26893855)

            The word is "incite", not "incentivize". There's no need to make up a new word when the word you're looking for already exists.

          • Re:Rule of thumb. (Score:5, Informative)

            by Gonoff ( 88518 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @08:24PM (#26896265)

            I do think so.

            There are a number of real words that would fit the bill in your example. They include...
            encourage
            cause
            incite
            persuade
            and lots more. The English language has an enormous number of words. Sometimes, when there isn't an appropriate word, one needs to be invented. Sometimes they are imported from other languages and sometimes they are existing ones used in a new way.

            What it does not need is sub-literate PHB buzz-speak. That fits the word "pathetic". That sort of excuse for communication just shows the need for basic literacy.

      • Re:Rule of thumb. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:55PM (#26893283) Journal

        No, because it's a euphemism for "let's find a way to take this previously free thing and charge people for it." It is a deceptive phrase, spoken by pointy haired bosses and marketroids with black little hearts and the morals of rabid weasels.

        It's not that profit is evil, and money itself is not the root of all evil. The desire for money is the root of all evil, and this phrase is used by people who get a stiffy thinking of all the ways they can screw you out of yours. They fall asleep dreaming of ways they could monetize breathing. "Hmmm, zzzzz, poison the atmosphere... znurk, hmph, sell oxygen.... yeah... zzzzzzz"

    • I DON'T TRUST YOU!

    • Since the word "monetize" will most likely be used by a marketing or sales guy, then yes, they are not to be trusted. But in reality they are just bearing the brunt of your anger for the guys performing the actions of actually monetizing something, e.g., programmers, or other techies.

  • standards (Score:5, Funny)

    by incripshin ( 580256 ) <markpeloquin&gmail,com> on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:29PM (#26892815) Homepage
    I'll be happy when the Internet becomes more standards compliant. If it needs to be funded by Dell, so be it.

    • Re:standards (Score:4, Interesting)

      by davester666 ( 731373 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:18PM (#26893671) Journal

      Well, if you want Dell to help make that happen, maybe encourage them to shovel money in a direction other than Microsoft, as it'll happen MUCH MUCH FASTER.

      While IE 8 is more standards compliant, it is still significantly behind it's competition (Safari/Webkit, Opera, FireFox to name three). It's pretty sad, given that MS has thrown the most number of developer hours at it (except perhaps for FireFox), that IE 8 is still behind, but it's not the developers fault. Management has basically ordered them to make sure that IE helps them sell IIS and developer tools, because the corporate intranet sites will 'work best' with IE, and only with extra effort work OK with non-IE browsers.

  • Wow (Score:2)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 )

    Both a Microsoft ad, AND a dupe? Heavens no - on slashdot of all places!

  • If they should you a computer, why do they need to blast their Logo on your screen too? It's not like you wouldn't be seeing their logo each and every day you use your computer.

    I'd see it as annoying, then again, it's a very good branding technique.

    • I'd see it as annoying, then again, it's a very good branding technique.

      I assume you're talking about Dell here, but Microsoft does an excellent job without any help. Take a typical system, open a single IE window and then count the number of "blue E" logos that appear on your monitor. The count should be 5 (title bar, address bar, status bar, desktop, quicklaunch). Open another window, and you get 4 more.

      Small wonder people associate the logo with The Internet.

      • Indeed, it's VERY powerfull when you see it constantly under your eyes. Where we used it, was very very effective aswell.

      • Uh, go to a typical machine with Firefox and count the number of Firefox logos. There's three (title bar, desktop, quicklaunch) plus two Google (address bar, search box). Small wonder people associate the weird fox eating the planet being chased by a bunch of "G"s with The Internet.

        (See what I did there?)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Barny ( 103770 )

          Not really, I have firefox open at the moment, I have 1 firefox icon and 1 google icon (title bar and google search box).

          Admittedly the grandfather post should have only said 3, since thats all actually in the window, but thats still 2 too many.

  • Originally what got me building my own PC's was all the crapware that came with an OEM installation. Unreal. So now it looks like they're pushing the crapware model on to the web browser.

    But it's more secure crapware this time. Wooo-hooo.

  • At my place of employment, we still use IE6 because many of our systems don't render properly on IE7/8. I hope this update will be received by our IT, so that we can finally get those bloody systems updated.
    I'm not holding too much hope though.

    • Re:Oddly enough (Score:5, Funny)

      by cryfreedomlove ( 929828 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:47PM (#26893149)
      You're lucky!

      At my place of employment, we're still using un-networked Apple II computers so we can utilize a rocket thrust calculator written in BASIC by our founder. He's been promising us 64K Macs for the past 20 years but I'm not holding my breath.

    • At my place of employment, we still use IE6 because many of our systems don't render properly on IE7/8. I hope this update will be received by our IT, so that we can finally get those bloody systems updated.

      At my place of employment, I grudgingly load IE7 a couple times a day to access partner sites that specifically forbid non-IE browsers. They also do wacky things like use mis-sized framesets and forbid right-clicking!

      Considering what a nightmare the sites are to use anyway - hey, let's make you log in tw

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zonky ( 1153039 )
      If you can get out on the Interwebs with IE6, Leave your job. Your IT people don't care about security, which probably threatens your own Job Security. http://secunia.com/advisories/product/11/ [secunia.com] IE6 should never be used on the interwebs. Ever.
  • Yes, of course it's optional. IE7 is still optional even though they moved it to high-priority so most people who haven't lost update capacity to a worm or had updates turned off or something have already had it automatically installed. Why bunny-ear something that is actually true?

  • MS claims that IE8 will offer better performance. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "MS claims that IE8 will offer better performance and security."

    I have heard this joke before somewhere!

    Anonymous Coward

  • If when selecting options for your new system you were given the options of different web browsers (or maybe different version of those wen browsers IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3...) would that be a bad thing for consumers? Letting the consumer decide (even if they selected *gasp* all of those free browsers). It actually might force microsoft to use a different metric for their web browser use then units shipped/sold. And choice is a good thing with computers.

    On a side not the ad for this article (for me)

    • Yes, that would be a Bad Thing.

      It would cause "What? That looks like Greek. I just want to use the Internet, not Firefox." reactions in a lot of people buying a computer. At some point, too much customization at once is a bad thing.

      Of course, I'd have no problem if, say, Dell decided to ship Firefox with their boxes. Or whatever. But what next? Give the option of Silverlight or Flash pre-installed? iTunes pre-installed? Quicktime vs. some other variant? VLC as well as Media Player?

      The answer to the

    • Why not take it a step further... offer options for installing bloatware. Let the vendors of the software pay to get you to install the bloat... AOL installer? $5 off computer. Norton Antivirus 90 day trial? $3 off computer. WildTangent game system with trial games? $10 off computer.

      Add in all sorts of other softwares, and people who want a cheap computer can opt in to the bloat (and format it later and deal with that minor hassle), and those who just want a clean computer can choose not to have any b

  • IE must be architecturally borked (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:51PM (#26893213) Journal

    IE has so many serios deficiencies that have been longstsanding and obvious, I can only conclude that these shortcomgs are architectural. Things that force web developers to implement two separate versions of their JS libs _ one for IE and one for everybody else who somehow, despite greatly reduced resource availability, are able to implement these features.

    Whether you are talking about connection handling, spacing and padding attributes, or listen handlers, it's just a public embarrassment for the company that once cried 'DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!'.

    At my company (a vertical niche information system vendor) we've become so jaded that we now tell our users that we actually support firefox and only test for IE. Not surprisingly, our users are about 90% FF.

    MS, you're dropping the ball, here, and those developers you once coddled have been SCREAMING about it for years. You're getting exactly what you deserve with your plummeting browser market share!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 )

      PS: I wrote this post using a moz-based browser on my mobile phone because the built-in IE browser is so bad that it can't even render slashdot in a usable (or even recognizable) fashion.

    • Hrm. On the other hand, FF is dropping the ball, to some extent, too. It's a good browser, I'm using it now, but having it eat 300MB of RAM is ridiculous. :)

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 )

        No ball dropped, just optimized for your platform. Really now - that 300 MB of RAM apparently sets you back about $6 [pricewatch.com]. Is that exorbitant? Firefox USES that RAM to speed up performance, and this can be fairly easily tweaked [mozillazine.org] if the $6 is more than you can stomach.

        For example, Skyfire [skyfire.com] is Mozilla based, and is quite usable on my 400 Mhz, 64 MB RAM Windows Mobile Pocket-PC phone.

        • My main desktop machine has 7GB ram, that's not the issue I'm referring to.... memory leaks exist in firefox, it's not a hidden fact.

          In fact, from the link you gave:

          Memory leaks can cause Firefox not to release memory that it is no longer using, especially with older versions. There has been a lot of effort to reduce the leaks in recent versions, and Mozilla developers have have created tools to detect them. [5] [6] To minimize leaks, you should upgrade to the most recent version. The most common memory leaks appear to be fixed in Firefox 2. [7] Firefox 3 will likely use even less memory than Firefox 2 due to more memory leak fixes and further efforts to reduce memory usage. [8] [9]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tatsh ( 893946 )

      Are you guys surprised by this news? Of COURSE they are going to put IE 8 into XP and Vista now that it is nearing completion what with RC's out now. I do not really care as I slipstream it anyway (with nLite), but otherwise I ignore it and use Firefox or Opera.

  • I am not sure how I feel about putting MSIE 8 onto new machines but I recall that MSIE 8 was supposed to be more standards compliant or at least host a mode of operation that is more standards compliant. At one point I heard that the default operating mode was in standards compliance mode and later I heard the default operating mode was to be some sort of "compatibility" mode (which is much nicer to hear than non-compliance mode). There has been plenty of time for Microsoft to reverse positions and all th

    • Well compared to IE 7 or IE 6, IE 8 is more standards compliant; however compared to other browsers, it is pretty pathetic at least according to ACID3. The latest ACID3 test [wikipedia.org] shows IE 7: 7/100, IE 8: 21/100. For perspective, all current releases of competing browsers score no lower than 71/100. Future releases of competing broswers show no lower than 83/100. Truly pathetic.

  • New computers need *SOME* sort of browser (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sunderland56 ( 621843 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @04:55PM (#26893273)
    A new out-of-the-box computer with no browser at all would not be fun - especially for the non-computer-literate user who doesn't have another system to download with.

    So, if a manufacturer is shipping a box with Windows, why not supply the latest version of Internet Explorer??

    • Re:New computers need *SOME* sort of browser (Score:4, Informative)

      by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:13PM (#26893567) Homepage

      Start->Run

      ftp ftp.mozilla.org
      cd /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0.6/win32/en-US/
      get "Firefox Setup 3.0.6.exe"

      IE is one of the most bloated firefox download tools there is.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by the_humeister ( 922869 )

        Yes, because command-line ftp is feasible for the general populace.

        • and incidentally, firefox isn't excatly unbloated itself.

          Actually, as far as FTP goes... last time I used FTP, firefox can only download, no uploading via FTP with FF. You can sorta do that with "IE" which can be a little bit of a timesaver if you just want to upload a single file or something like that, and you're already on the site, etc...

      • This is the most retarded thing that always comes up in IE discussions.

        Noone - NOONE - is going to go to all that trouble with a crappy command line tool just to download Firefox - they aren't psychic, so how would they even know that URL. Also, not everyone WANTS to use Firefox. Sometimes I don't (though I am typing this message in Firefox now).

  • Right from wikipedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetize [wikipedia.org]

    Monetization is the process of converting or establishing something into legal tender. It usually refers to the printing of banknotes by central banks, but things such as gold, diamonds and emeralds, and art can also be monetized by Standby Letter of Credit brokers. Even intrinsically worthless items can be made into money, as long as they are difficult to make or acquire. Monetization may also refer to exchanging securities for currency, selling

  • **applause** (Score:3, Informative)

    by ivoras ( 455934 ) <ivoras@NospaM.fer.hr> on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:24PM (#26893767) Homepage
    Is there anyone here that wants users to CONTINUE USING IE6??? Because IE6 is what's included in stock XP. As for Vista, well, IE7 isn't so great, maybe IE8 will be more standards-conformant.

  • Anything but IE6 (Score:3, Informative)

    by spinkham ( 56603 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:29PM (#26893845)
    IE 8 isn't my favorite browser,but it's worlds better then IE 6.. It's quality related to IE 7 is harder to discern at this point, but anything that encourages businesses and other IE 6 holdouts to move forward is a good thing in my view. I'd rather they move to Gecko(Firefox), Webkit(Chrome, safari), or Opera, but please, I'm pleading, let IE 6 die...

  • Microsoft Windows is optional. You can easily opt out of it: there are many Web sites devoted to helping you do so. It need not even cost you any money.

  • Negative tone (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lord Lode ( 1290856 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:43PM (#26894081)
    Why the negative tone? I'm glad to hear that even XP will come with IE8. Do you know what the alternative is? IE6. IE6 is old and useless, the less people use it the better. For web developers it's better not to have to support IE6 anymore. It doesn't even support transparent PNGs, you know? So yay for IE8 instead of IE6 in Windows. Even if I don't use nor like it, the fact that it gets shoved on everyone's PC instead of IE6 is good.

  • Why branding ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by billcopc ( 196330 ) <vrillco@yahoo.com> on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:55PM (#26894285) Homepage

    I never really understood the value of OEM branding. I've already bought the damned PC, what more do they want ? Having a stupid Dell logo spin in IE while their site fails to load, is not going to make me want to buy more Dell gear.

    People take branding way too seriously, especially when we're talking about major brands that everyone knows.

  • Now I hope they've got the rendering problems solved. Our site now renders fine in IE 6 and 7, but didn't work at all in 8 Beta. In RC1, it worked, but looked really funky with some divs being split in two with one half rendering on spot on the screen and the other half rendering somewhere else.

    60% of our traffic is still MSIE based since most people are ordering from work and their office PC's have MSIE installed by default.

  • March? They're rushing IE8. This could be bad. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TodLiebeck ( 633704 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @07:32PM (#26895697) Homepage

    As a developer of an AJAX-based web framework, I'm upset to see IE8 being thrown out the door so quickly. RC1 was nothing short of a disaster: it had a performance bug where nesting absolute-positioned DIVs would result in exponential performance decreases.

    Test case here: http://echo.nextapp.com/content/test/ie8/ [nextapp.com]

    The 25-nested DIV test would require killing the browser. Nesting absolutely positioned DIVs is somewhat fundamental to delivering application-style user interface layouts in a web browser.

    I reported this bug everywhere I could, and Microsoft actually did a great job in responding to it. They say they've found it and fixed it. But there is no way for us to test this. We must simply take their word for it and wait. They're going from RC1 to final, and begging and pleading for an interim build didn't warrant much of a response.

    From reading forums (e.g. Ajaxian: http://ajaxian.com/archives/push-back-digital-tv-or-ie-8 [ajaxian.com]), my IE8 experience is not uncommon with other web frameworks as well. The average developer's opinion there suggests RC1 is nowhere near ready for a final release. Every build of IE8 (beta1, beta2, win 7's "beta2+", and the RC) have each had major unique problems not found in other releases.

    I have developers asking me if their software will work in IE8 on day 1 and the only honest answer is "I have absolutely no idea." Anyone (without a final build) who tells you otherwise, even offerring a rough estimate, is a liar, IMHO.

    I don't understand the point of putting out a "release candidate" and then not using feedback to determine whether the next release is a "candidate" or a "final". Our bug alone means that IE8 RC1 has never been publicly tested with many complex web-based applications.

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