Internet Explorer 9 – 64 Bit Beta – With Flash (beta) – Finally!

Yesterday IE 9 Beta landed on the web. It’s a major rework of the most popular browser, with support for fancy new features (like HTML 5 and CSS 3) and Hardware Video acceleration. I of course installed it right away, and then was even more ecstatic when I saw in my Google Reader feed that Adobe (Finally!!!) released 64 Bit version of their ubiquitous Flash Player.

First impressions? I am not really all that impressed, unfortunately for Microsoft. Although I am really excited that 64 Bit browsing (which is presumably more secure) now finally sports HTML5 support and Flash support.

I guess speed still depends on server and Internet congestion. Startup experience is improved, but Chrome still starts faster on my machine. New tabs open pretty quickly, but look unimpressive (to say the least). Plus, on their own Beauty of the Web site, I get significant “hiccups” in frame rates, from time to time. This is on nVidia accelerated quad core beast, aka my main PC, which I am very happy with overall.

Oh well, it’s a Beta. Overall, it is definitely a step in the right direction. Plus, if you are one of those (strange?) people who like Toolbars and Add-ons, it will tell you which ones are running slow and impacting your overall IE browser performance.

Enjoy!