Home & Small Office Computer Guide

But is it worth downloading?

I downloaded IE 7 last night and installed it on two of my computers. The actual installation took some time because Microsoft wants to check your computer before it actually goes ahead and does anyting and that became a little tedious.

IE7 automatically imports your bookmarks and any toolbars you may use (I use the Google toolbar) but you may find that it then adds things to those toolbars and the end result can look rather clunky. I ditched McAfee SiteAdvisor on the PC that I installed IE7 on because it pushed the toolbars out of shape.

The user interface is definitely not as user-friendly as it was om IE6. Instead of a neat row of buttons and text links across the top it has a few small buttons on the right hand side of the screen that are combined with  drop-down menus.

IE7 does have tabbed browsing at last but it doesn’t seem to do it as well as Firefox does. IE7 also gives you access to various extensions - just as Firefox does - but from what I read those extensions aren’t as useful - or extensive - or as free as the extensions for Firefox are.

Security and Speed
There are some added security measures for IE7 which may or may not prove useful. One is an anti-phishing filter that scans websites before they load in the browser window. You can turn that filter on or off and I will probably end up turning it off because it certainly slows the loading time way down and I already find it annoying that the filter wants to test sites that I own and that I know are not likely to want to take control of my computer.

The Bottom Line
Just about everything I have said here is based on my personal preferences and experience and that means that you may have a totally different experience with IE7 than me. However, in my humble opinion, I don’t see IE7 as being worth raving about and it’s not something that I would suggest anyone rush out and download.

But if you want to try it for yourself then you can download IE7 here

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 21st, 2006 at 6:44 am and is filed under General News, IE7. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.