14 DAY TRIAL // Next week it will be a month since Microsoft released the first beta development milestone of Internet Explorer 9, the next major iteration of IE, a browser release which the company is encouraging everyone to use. While in Stockholm, Sweden on October 4, 2010 on his European tour, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer, noted that users should take IE9 Beta out for a spin, disregarding the Beta label.
“It's in beta, but it's a very wide open beta. I encourage you to download Internet Explorer 9. I've given it the ultimate test; I put it on my wife's PC, for which I am the help desk manager,” Ballmer said.
“So far I've gotten nothing but praises and compliments. So, I do encourage you to try it.”
I was invited at the Beauty of the Web event in San Francisco on September 15th, 2010, and covered the launch of IE9.
I’ve been using IE9 Beta full time on one of my computers since then, and I’m looking to upgrade all my machines to the Build. Since mid-September, 6 million additional users have also downloaded IE9 Beta.
Fact is that if you can manage to download and install the browser yourselves then you are more than qualified to be a Beta tester for IE9.
I won’t lie to you, this is still a Beta, and you are bound to come across some glitches, but it will be an excellent chance to report them to Microsoft and make sure that the final (RTW) version of Internet Explorer 9 will be as flawless as possible.
Ballmer’s European tour is focused on Microsoft’s investments in the Cloud, and fact is that IE9 is one of these investments.
“Internet Explorer is the No. 1 browser on the planet. We've had a lot of competition. It's an interesting category, Internet browsing, because in a sense it has no independent business model, and yet everybody understands it's one of the most fundamental starting points for Internet journeys,” Ballmer said.
“And so when we talk about new client hardware and software, we're not talking about clients turning away from the Internet and from standards, we're talking about new ways in which clients -- phones, PCs, and TVs -- can embrace the cloud, but bring the benefit of intelligence on the device and the advantages of intelligence in the cloud together, and that's really what we've done with Internet Explorer 9,” the CEO added.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Build 9.0.7930.16406 is available for download here.