yeap i ran into this problem. google, this site, would not render properly, i had to force enable compatibility mode for all sites, else i ran into problems. things like text boxes were rendered in very small font, to the point that they were unreadable and unusable. i even switch to firefox because of problems. nows i'm back, but i still have some issues and one wonders is it the websites or ie8. firefox renders them ok, so did the old ie7, but not ie8, it could be that html standards have changed or that people did not follow them, but the solution is not to break every website, it's to default to what everyone did and not break everyones site...

I installed it at home and work. Nothing wrong and very fast. I also use Safari,Chrome and of course the Fox...
For those with issues just use compatability mode...

I use Chrome and love it. Sometimes chrome will have some issues, and after a reload or two I switch over to IE7 and it will work... then back to chrome as quickly as possible.

Its clean UI and speed are the main reasons I was attracted to it.

i can't find a version for os x. what gives?

Since Opera does it all for me(email, web, torrents) I wasn't even tempted.

who would use IE8 on OSX??? Safari is heavily optimized in OS X and has compatability with other OS X apps. If you really can't stand Safari download OmniWeb (os x only browswer) or Firefox

In trying out Windows 7, I found out that our web based time sheets don't work with IE8. That and no significant gains over FF3 has be back to using FF3 almost exclusively.

Which makes me wonder how much the IE8 surge was due to the Windows 7 beta, and the large fallback are people putting on their favorite browser shortly thereafter.

It has a little broken page icon up in the top corner by the refresh button. At hand compatability views. Using this, I havent had a single problem, and even have toms working right finally.

So far good luck with it. I've had some sites not look right, until I used the compatibility view, so far it's been great. Haven't used it on any of my 64-bit machines or vista yet though.

I think we are talking about those people who just installed it to "try out", and went back to their original preferred browser. I, for example, use firefox, and installed it to check it out, but I am still using firefox.
I even liked it, internet explorer 8 proved me very fast and good, for the few days I used it.
downgrading?? well, as long as they have a compatibility option, no need to.

I use firefox, but like you said, had the curiosity to see the other side, but IE8 is buggy and after installed, my feeddemon gone mad. I tried to install feed reader and it had the same problems despite firefox being the default browser. I had to restore the system to solve the problem. I think IE8 needs a few patches before become usable.

I've been using IE8 since it was Beta 1. Very few sites don't work properly, and of those I haven't had one that didn't work in compatibility mode. So, basically, IE8 final is not really any different from RC1 that I've found. But it is improved since Beta 1 and 2.

I normally use Firefox but played with IE 8 and liked it. I actually prefer the IE8 user interface to Firefox. And as far as sites not working, all you have to do is turn on compatibility mode by clicking one button. I switched back to Firefox just because it's been reliable, but I could switch back to Internet Explorer without complaints.

As a web developer I also love the fact that IE8 is very standards compliant in its rendering. The days of having to use hacks to get things to display correctly in IE should be gone now. And that makes me very happy.

more people will hopefully switch to chrome, which would help Google figure out that it has zero privacy settings for the browser

i just tried ie8 and its very fast...It's a great backup browser to ff3 if i need something real quick.. also the highlight and search or map feature was real nifty.

In compatibilty mode IE8 reports itself as IE7 in response to calls like Request.Browser.Type

Depending on how the statistics were gathered what looks like people reverting is likely just an illusion created by people turning on compatibilty mode. A lot of them probably just set it on by default rather than bother doing it site by site.

I've used IE8 since the beta last year. This site was definately giving me difficulty pre-RTM but it seems to finally be working properly with the newest version.

Frankly though, this site has given me problems with IE regardless of the version since the latest revision about a year or so ago--IE6, IE7, IE8--they all seemed to crash after clicking the "next" buttons in the longer articles more than four or five pages into it. This is regardless of what PC I use--home built, Dell, HP--also happened on 2000, XP, or Vista. Being the only site that has given me so many issues on IE, it kind of pissed me off a bit. Still, I haven't had the problem with the final release of IE8.

As far as gmail goes, it's kind of a mixed thing. Most of the time, it works just fine, but on occassion, the navigation menus for the email screws up. I have no idea why it would work most of the time and not all of the time.

Other than gmail and a certain fan-based Star Wars web site, I have not had any issues with the final release of IE8.

Forgot--those sites DO work consistently with compatibility mode enabled.

I just updated to IE 8 for the heck of it and it seems exactly the same to me as IE 7. However, I just use IE for ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC to view full episodes of shows in HD. Otherwise I use Firefox. Firefox seems to crash and stutter more often with HD video probably because they did a crap job making the Move Media Player.

IE8 stops downloading anything from it. I have to use Firefox. I mean, it acts like it going to save something to the spot you want but when you go there...nothing. Kinda not liking Win 7 as a whole now. I have the 4057 build of Win 7 too. Contemplating about going straight back to Vista Ult.

I mainly use FF. I have been using IE8 since the beta and just installed the final release. The only thing I use it for is por... I mean private mode...

Just a quick question to you Chromeies... is it really that much better than FF? Thanks.

I think ie8 is fine for my mom, she doesn't do anything complicated on the web. Also common for people to revert to previous version? Try that with firefox, that stupid browser b****es at me if I am running version 2, so it basically forced me to update to 3 which is a good browser but I wouldn't want to be using the old one. I'm going to update to ie8 on my own pc's and see how well I can live with it. I probably can though since I never launch IE anyways, I have my XP set to launch firefox by default and even my MSN Messenger doesn't launch stupid IE any more, it launches firefox now when I click on my hotmail. Pretty sweet.

jeverson, I wouldn't recommend Chrome, it is a very stripped down browser. I'd only recommend it if you are going to sites that are very simple. I don't use Chrome at all, I tested it once and it worked fine but I don't need it so I haven't reinstalled it on my current system builds.

I've been using IE8. I like the new features and haven't run into any problems. I'm not sure why anyone would revert back to IE7 since IE8 is basically the same thing with a few welcome editions. I realize its a little different in the background end of things where some pages could come up as broken, but then theres a button you press to run a IE7 emulator which fixes those pages. So far I have not had to use that button.

Its stuff like this that makes me glad im still using IE6 on my main PC.

And im still convinced some oddball IE7 security hole is why I had to reload my server over the weekend.

Safari V4 has the coolest "top sites" page, or whatever you call it, that I've seen. IE8 has given me trouble, but so has Safari.

Those numbers aren't comparable. One is from Sunday (when most people are using computers from at home where they have much more liberty to use whatever software they like) and one is from Monday (when most people are at work where they have to deal with company-approved installations).

I had downloaded the IE8 beta in November, reverted back to IE7 due to compatability problems, then reinstalled the IE8 Release last week. No problems in compatability mode. I had also read the web page timing charts that MS posted; interestingingly enough, I couldn't personally differentiate between the number of nanometers of eyeblink of each of the browers tested. Of course, I'm old and slow compared to the Y-genners, or is it now the P-genners? Oh, well, they still accuse me of lying about scripting *.SYS and *.BAT files in the old days too.

IE just sucks, go for firefox and GNU/linux

That's what happens when you suddenly decide to go by the standards: pages that were modified to work with ie7 get screwed. Nice going MS. What i hate most about IE8 is the Yahoo Messenger ad : "Try IE8 ...especially optimized for Yahoo" That's pure bs

I was unable to view IMDB with IE8! That is a major site with millions of hits per day! Basically, the only thing I liked about IE8 is the ability to highlight stuff and have the easy-jump feature allow me to jump to a google map etc. Also the rendering engine on IE8 is REALLY slow!!!