14 DAY TRIAL // 40 million downloads later, the Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) RTW (Release to Web) is now available for download to users worldwide. As previously announced, IE9 RTW went live yesterday, March 14th, 2011 at 9:00 PM PDT, although the launch was announced a tad earlier at SXSW 2011 by Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president, Windows Internet Explorer, at Microsoft.
Early adopters already running IE9 Release Candidate (RC) since February 10, will not be able to notice any major differences in the RTW development milestone. Simply because there are none.
The focus with the evolution from RC to RTW was placed on fine-tuning the browser, and getting it ready for release.
IE9 RTW has been launched in no less than 39 localized versions. As I told you yesterday, Japanese users will need to be patient, as due to the natural disaster brought on by the 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami last week, Microsoft decided to postpone availability in the land of the rising sun.
“The IE team extends our sympathies to those affected by the massive earthquake in Japan. Out of respect for the situation, we are delaying the rollout of the final Japanese language version of IE9 to reduce load on network bandwidth at such a critical time,” Hachamovitch stated.
Only customers running Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7 RTM / SP1 will be able to download, install and run IE9 RTW.
As previously revealed, IE9 RTW does not support Windows XP SP3, or any other Windows release prior to Vista SP2 for that matter.
Below you will find a list of key areas of investment with IE9:
“- Fast. With IE9, the Web delivers a new level of performance by unlocking the power of the PC hardware through Windows.
- Clean. With IE9, consumers can keep sites at the center of their browsing experience, pinning them to the taskbar and interacting with them the same way they do applications.
- Trusted. IE9 offers industry-leading protections (like SmartScreen) for the real-world threats (such as malicious sites and phishing scams) that consumers face every day on a sometimes-hostile Web.
- Interoperable. With hardware-accelerated HTML5, developers can use the same markup across browsers to deliver a new class of Web experiences that feel more like apps than sites,” Hachamovitch added.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows Vista SP2 64-bit edition and Windows Server 2008 SP2 64-bit edition is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 64-bit edition, Windows 7 SP1 64-bit edition, Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit edition and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit edition is available for download here.