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We recently downloaded the Beta Version of the New Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). Whilst it’s not the final version for release it gives us all a good idea of what to expect from the final release of the software. Here’s a our views on the program and a little bit about what’s new!

First Impressions (click image to enlarge)

Much more aesthetically pleasing than previous versions of the program. Rather than looking its usual dated and cluttered self, IE9 has taken a huge leap into the 21st century having previously drastically needing an injection of botox and a tummy tuck. This has lead to a cool, calm, simplistic finish which appears to be much more user friendly. The overall speed of the web browser also seems considerably improved.

Want to read the rest of this post? Head over to Brandstar.co.uk

So our first post on Windows 7 RC was relativly short, this one comes after a bit of use and testing and we stand by the previous title “Windows 7 RC is BRILLIANT”  we are very impressed.

If you don’t want to read on then you can take these three things away from our findings

• Speed
• Stable
• Compatible

For those with the time to read on we will explain what we are meaning by these three findings.

Speed

We have Windows 7 running on a pretty average system, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB Memory, 160GB Hard Drive. Nothing hugely special by today’s standards but we have found it to run very nicely.

The sort of use it has got is in the list below and at no point have we found it to be slow, non-responsive or sluggish. Obviously it is a new install and this helps but still we are impressed! So it has been used for the following over the last few weeks

• Website design
• Internet / Email
• General Office work
• FTP
• Remote Support

Stable

No crashes or hanging to date! What more can we say…?

Compatability

Software / Hardware we have successfully working on the Windows 7 system is as follows:

• Dell Optiplex 360 – ok, this is actually the hardware it is running on, but still useful to know!
• T-Mobile Mobile Broadband Adaptor – this didn’t work on the Beta so we are very impressed it works now!
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Hamachi VPN
• Filezilla
• Firefox
• Crossloop
• AVG 8.5 Internet Security
• Windows Home Server Connector Software

We still have got a bit more testing before we would be happy to adopt it as a operating system for a production office machine, but I am very tempted! Roll on Final Release…

Brandstar have recently released a brand new Software page!  The software page attempts to tackle the problem of not knowing which software is worth buying and downloading.  After all, there are so many options to choose from!  It covers a variety of both free and commercial products in the genres of Computer Security, Media, Office Applications and System Tools.

It’s worth checking out!

So we have had Firefox 3, Google Chrome and on the horizon is Internet Explorer 8! At the moment there is a beta version out which we have been playing with. We would like to remind users that beta versions are really only for designers and developers or those more competent computer users. This is because it is not a final version and there is a possibility of some stability issues!

If you think you are one of those users then take a look at the IE8 Beta download, otherwise it is best to wait for it to be properly released, but if you want to read about what is different then take a look at the office IE8 site.

We have been playing with the beta and like it very much, which means a lot considering we are BIG Firefox fans! Some pages which don’t work too well in IE7 now work properly in IE8 which is brilliant! In our eyes they have fixed the CSS layout issues, we also think it is quicker than IE7 which can’t be bad, there are a number of nice new features which we could talk about but read properly about them all here, a couple that stand out to us are the InPrivate browsing and also the SmartScreen Filter.

This is just a short post highlighting this new release of Internet Explorer so we won’t be reviewing it properly until it has been released, but well worth keeping an eye on we think!

Tuesday of this week saw Google release their own web browser! Arguably the best search engine on the web has produced a very nice browser. I have only been using it for a few days now but I am loving it. Most noticably two things visually that stand out to me are

• There is not a big toolbar at the top, so more of my screen is filled with the web page, therefore less scrolling so that is great!
• When opening the browser you get your most recent websites shown to you with little scrrenshots!

Following on from last weeks review of Flock, this week I thought I would bring to peoples attention a neat little extension for Firefox. IE Tab allows websites that don’t normally work in Firefox but do in IE to work within the Firefox browser!

All you have to do is choose to open that link or that site in the IE Tab window and it works just as if it were in Internet Explorer itself!

Check out Firefox and IE Tab and see what you think

Sorry, running a bit late with this one. Flock – The Social Web Browser works with Windows, Mac AND Linux, so something for everyone here. It is specifically desiged to really integrate into the social networking sites like facebook and make your browsing experience “fast, convienent and fun!”

It is built on the Firefox technology and the current beta version is based on firefox 3. For those that use the web a lot for networking with people, shareing photos, using a web based email account then Flock is well worth considering.

Something I like is that Hotmail works better in Flock that it does in Firefox, so if you like your hotmail or live account but don’t like Internet Explorer then download Flock for free and see what you think

Let us know if you use it…what you think…etc

Our Quick Tip for this week: Multiple Homepages Open on Firefox Startup

To have multiple tabs open when you open firefox or when you press the Home button can be really useful and all you need to do is the following:

In Firefox go to Tools > Options
and in the ‘Homepage’ box enter the sites you want to open seperated by a bar | so you would have something like:

www.brandstar.co.uk | www.firefox.com | www.bbc.co.uk/sport

Then all 3 will open when you open Firefox