It is now four weeks since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 . That’s ample time for testing and evaluating. I’ve used the software just about every day since the launch and feel ready to report on the experience.

Until now Microsoft Internet Explorer has been a necessity and not my browser of choice. It’s a necessity because there are a limited number of sites and online services, including a number from Microsoft, optimised or in some cases restricted to Explorer.

For the past four years Mozilla Firefox has consistently performed better than Internet Explorer. It was always faster and less bloated. Add-ons give Firefox a flexibility older versions of Internet Explorer simply could not match. And, while Microsoft’s browsers were better integrated with Windows and certain key desktop applications, Firefox was still able to deliver a better all round user experience.

In practice I’ve needed to run the two browsers alongside each other. Explorer has always played second fiddle. Can the upgrade to IE8 change that?

What’s good about Internet Explorer 8?

IE8 is fast

IE8 loads pages considerably faster than Firefox 3.0.8. One heavy-duty Web 2.0 page I frequent is ready in around 28 seconds with IE8. The same page takes 52 seconds with Firefox. The difference isn’t always as pronounced, however I did the anal retentive thing and timed a number of pages to discover they all loaded faster with IE8.

Once Firefox loads into memory, it can be restarted in seconds. But the first time it loads in a session can run to as long as five minutes. That’s just plain awful. In many cases Firefox takes so long to fire up, I wonder if it is loading at all. I often find my self opening two or more instances. IE8 always fires up in seconds. However, there’s a down side to this as we shall see later.

Fabulous developer tools

It’s geeky, but one of the truly great improvements in IE8 are the developer tools. Hit F12 and you can view a page’s source code and CSS. It’s great for fixing up problems with your own pages. To get similar features in Firefox you need to install the Firebug extension.

Internet Explorer 8 is cleaner than earlier versions

It’s web-standard compliant, has a tidy user interface and most of the time renders pages beautifully with crisp text.

I also like:

• Colour-coded tabs Open a new tab and its colour will match that of the parent page.
• Tab grouping Tabs are grouped with their parent tab.
• Smart address bar Similar to the Firefox’s new address bar, it remembers where you’ve been and your most visited sites.
• Useful new tabs Open a new tab and you get links to the sites you’re most likely to want to visit.
• Tab view A quick tab feature allows you to see thumbnails of all open tabs.
• RSS Internet Explorer does a better job of handling feeds than Firefox.
• Search bar Sure Firefox has the same feature, but I like the way the IE8 search bar works and the way it can be used to search the current page as well as the entire Internet.
• Smooth integration Microsoft gets nervous when people talk about the way its products integrate, but IE8 works smoothly with Windows and Office.  The software also downloads and installs without a hitch.
• Security See the anti-phishing feature kick in for the first time is impressive.

Bad things about Internet Explorer 8

Within hours of installing and running Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 on my Windows Vista Ultimate system I quickly discovered some negatives. Let’s look at them one by one:

1. Key features simply don’t work or are erratic

There are two pre-installed items on the favorites bar: Suggested Sites and Get More Add-ons. Neither of them work. Clicking either opens a windows that says “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” and there’s a button labeled Diagnose Connection Problems. This doesn’t happen all the time, just most of the time.

Some basic things simply don’t work at all on some sites. For example I tried joining Chi.mp using IE8, but the Captcha feature didn’t show up making it impossible to use. I had to switch to Firefox to enroll.

While we’re on the subject, Microsoft hasn’t bothered to localize spellings. Outside of North America the word is favourite, not favorite.

2. Crashing

After one month of use I experienced three major Internet Explorer 8 crashes. In each case I’ve had to reboot the machine and lost work because of the crashes. I’m not certain what causes the problems, but there’s something weird happening. I’m running IE8 on a Windows Vista Ultimate system with 2GB of Ram. Firefox has its problems, but it never crashes in such a spectacular and worrying fashion. I’ve also experienced a number of less serious crashes which are fixed by closing and reopening IE8. Frankly this instability is the biggest barrier to my switching from Firefox to Internet Explorer. Presumably Microsoft will fix up the bugs over the coming weeks, but this does not fill me with confidence.

3. A lot of pages look strange

Internet Explorer 8 may be standards compliant, but it won’t display all the pages you throw at it. Ironically the biggest problem come when you view a page designed for IE7 or IE6. There’s a compatibility button in the address bar to ‘fix’ odd-looking pages by reverting the browser to IE7 mode. Nevertheless some pages still struggle. And curiously the button doesn’t always appear when you need it.

There are other anomalies. For example, if I visit the dashboard at Wordpress.com, IE 8 frequently struggles to display the stats graph, even though it shows up perfectly well in Firefox.

4. Unable to automatically reload settings on start-up

It’s not a deal breaker, but one Firefox feature I love is the way it opens up with all the tabs exactly as they were left when you closed down. IE8 doesn’t do this. Apparently it was designed this way.

5. Active X is still a pain in the bum

Sorry Microsoft, I know Active X is your baby, but there’s a good reason everyone whinges about it. Here’s a simple explanation of why it is so awful for non-technical readers.

6. Spell-checking missing in action

Yes I know I’m supposed to be a professional writer and I shouldn’t need a spell checker. Generally I don’t. It’s switched off in Microsoft Word, but when I’m adding comments to someone’s blog my typing isn’t so hot. A spell checker is a way of a avoiding red faces.

And the ugly?

Despite the headline, there’s nothing ugly. I claim poetic licence. Internet Explorer 8 is a good all-round browser. It will meet most people’s needs most of the time. It comes close to meeting mine – very close. I’m certain the majority of users will happily browse away using IE8 without giving the technology a second thought.

However, it’s shortcomings mean, at least until the next iteration or service pack arrives IE8 remains on my machine by necessity for those IE only sites and not because it’s the best browser. If it was more reliable, this decision could change. This is a pity because there is much to love about IE8 – and that’s not something I would ever have said about IE7.

Any science fiction movie worth its salt features computers or robots that not only recognise human speech but also understand what the speaker means. This isn’t likely to stay fiction for much longer*.

Right now, some of the best brains in the computer industry are working to develop ‘natural language processing’ products. That’s the jargon term for software that turns vocal sounds into meaningful data.

When natural language processing arrives, it will be the biggest breakthrough in the history of computing. Apart from anything else, it will mean we can do away with keyboards and screens – or at least relegate them to occasional use.

But intelligent voice recognition isn’t just about computers. Imagine telephones, TV sets and microwave ovens that understand spoken instructions.

Natural language processing

Natural language processing won’t all arrive at once. We are at probably ten and maybe 15 years away from computers hearing the difference between war and Waugh. And computers capable of meaningful conversation, like Star Wars’ C3P0, won’t be available for 20 years or more.

The early fruits of language processing have been on the market for years. ACT, a now defunct British computer maker, sold a system that responded to a limited set of voice commands in 1981. Today, we have fourth, possibly even fifth, generation voice recognition products that can turn the spoken word into typewritten text – most of the time. You may see them referred to as speech recognition applications.

The slow progress to date has not been due to software issues, but had more to do with the available computer power. You need a substantial processor to run voice recognition. Make that substantial spare processing capacity after all the fancy graphics and other cycle-chewing work required by modern operating systems.

When they work as advertised, today’s voice recognition products are impressive. It was Arthur C Clark who wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology tends to look like magic. It’s hard not to believe in the supernatural the first time you see your own speech appear as type on a PC screen.

Better for small business

Unlike many computer products on the market today, voice recognition offers more to small businesses than large companies. There are two reasons for this. First, voice recognition requires a degree of effort on the part of the user. A users train the software to understand an individual’s voice and speech patterns.

Further refinement is needed over the first few weeks of use. Because of this, it only works well for highly motivated people. Indeed, mischievous, or reluctant users can make sure their systems never work effectively.

A second reason is that voice recognition products needs lots of support. The cost of supporting an individual PC user tends to rise with organization size. In a big company, the cost overheads of voice recognition can outweigh the productivity gains.

The biggest name in voice recognition is Dragon, part of Nuance. The company’s Naturally Speaking software comes in a variety of packages costing from around NZ$200 for a student edition climbing to NZ$1500 for a corporate package. (Prices are in New Zealand dollars, roughly 50 cents US).

In addition to a powerful computer – Nuance recommends a 2.4GHz Pentium Dual Core, anything less will deliver disappointing results – voice recognition systems need a good microphone. In theory they can work with a PC’s internal microphone. In practice it usually isn’t worth the bother.

Memory is less important

Memory isn’t so important if you’re running an older operating system, but if you’re running Windows Vista, you’ll need well over 1GB of Ram. Pretty much any PC sound card will do so long as it can handle recording.

All the commercial specialist voice recognition programs are available in packages that include microphones, usually on headsets. You can also buy digital voice recorders bundled with speech recognition software – these can be great for taking voice notes when you are out and about.

You may already have voice recognition on your computer. The latest versions of Microsoft Windows and Office have baked-in speech recognition. It’s not as quick, as polished or as customisable as NaturallySpeaking, but at least Microsoft’s tools give you an opportunity to test the technology before parting with any cash.

You couldn’t realistically use any existing voice recognition products to write a book unless you were patient. Nor are they likely to replace good typing skills in the near future. Nevertheless they are more than adequate for composing emails and short memos. What’s more, when voice recognition tools are integrated into a computer’s operating system, they can control functions such as opening and closing files or selection commands from menus. In fact, voice recognition tools are widely used by people with disabilities – especially the blind and other people with seeing difficulties.

* Not likely to be fiction much longer?
There’s a bit of poetic licence here. The ACT voice recognition system I saw in London in 1981 could only ‘learn’ ten words. A salesman told me proper voice recognition was around “two years away”. It’s nearly 30 years on, and while the programs are massively better, they still need polish before being acceptable to mainstream users. Maybe two more years will do the trick. As for ‘natural language processing’… that’ll take longer.

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As the late 1990s flicked over into the early 2000s, Linux briefly looked like it might challenge Microsoft Windows as an alternative operating system for everyday PC users. The open source operating system has come a long way since those days. And Microsoft scored a huge own goal with the confusing, incomplete and frequestly downright annoying Windows Vista.

Yet Linux has barely managed to break out beyond its hard core following of geeky devotees. Indeed Windows now faces bigger threats to its monopoly than Linux. Meanwhile Linux struggles to gain traction. It’s not hard to see why.

It’s almost a decade since I wrote for the now defunct Australian Linux Today website run by Internet.com. At its peak, posts would attract many thousands of reads, often tens of thousands of reads, and hundreds of comments. Being slashdotted is addictive.

Apart from the odd loon, most of the discussion and debate was passionate, informed and intelligent. Internet.com couldn’t make Linux Today pay, at least not in Australia. The parent Linux Today site lives on under the Jupitermedia banner.

In a way, the demise of the Australian Linux Today site is a direct consequence of the broader problem with Linux and its inability to reach a wider audience. We had bankable traffic, but nobody in the Linux business was buying our advertising. That’s because nobody in the Linux business has much of a marketing budget. That’s because hardly anyone in the Linux business makes money from the open source operating system. Which is turn is down to the fact that Linux is given away. There was no profit to support the kind of thriving ecosystem that underpins Microsoft Windows.

There’s not much today either. Or, perhaps more to the point, there’s not even the money to fund the kind of thriving ecosystem that underpins planet Google, mobile computing and the world of Web 2.0 websites-cum-services-cum-applications that now  threaten to outflank Windows.

Linux, open source software, or something similar, underpins most Microsoft challengers. And Vista’s annoyances aside (more about them another time) the threat of Linux and open source did much to prod Microsoft into improving its act. Today the company and its products are massively improved.

Today’s Linuxes (is that a permitable plural? Perhaps I should write Linuxen) are good. There’s not much in Vista the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.10 fails to provide. Kubuntu is possibly better. Fedora and Open maybe less consumer-friendly, but are still plausible options.

It’s great that companies and people freely donate their own time and energy to open source projects. Long may that continue. Linux users operate at the cutting edge and continue to pioneer new ideas and technologies that will permeate into the mainstream. But I can’t see Linux ever climbing out of its geeky gravity well and being truely mainstream. That day has passed. Linux may find its way under the bonnet (hood if you’re American) of mainstream technologies, but I doubt it will ever be the face of day-to-day computing.

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