IE8 was released out of beta on the 19th. I don't think it's being pushed out in automatic updates yet though.
You've got to love Microsoft. They try to make the web according to their standards with IE until the rug was pulled out from under them with Opera, Firefox, Safari and the W3C itself pushing harder than ever for standards conformity. What that means for developers is that they have to code webpages in standard spec (X)HTML and also with things thrown in for IE so that the page doesn't look messed up with that browser.
IE7 comes along and improves standards compliance but I guess they had an even longer road to go as IE8 is actually their first to pass the Acid2 test.
So what this means now is that IE8 is pretty close to being a standards compliant browser. The problem now is that pages coded for IE's quirks actually screws IE8 up now.
Overall, IE8 is a lot like IE7 in terms of interface. The Alt+F search is now more like Fx's, though it's at the top instead of the bottom. They've added Accelerators, which is where you can highlight text and a button will appear. If you click it you have options based on which Accelerators you have installed. There are things like search via [search engine of your selection], map via [mapping engine of your selection], translate with [translation engine], send via e-mail with [your e-mail host of choice].
They also added something called Web Slices, which I don't like because it's something that harks back to the old IE days of Microsoft trying to define things that only work in IE (or browsers that choose to implement such non-(X)HTML standards). My best guess is that it is kind of like RSS feeds. I'm not sure exactly what they are supposed to be for.
There is now something called InPrivate, which is supposed to afford some increased level of privacy from other users of the same PC. It allows you to start a "private" browsing session and you can control what happens during and at the end of this session. It can be set to delete cookies, temp files, and history when the session ends and block items that track your browsing history. As a parent and IT administrator I don't like this idea, but I'm sure it can be disabled. For people surfing porn on their parents' PCs, I'm sure they'll like it.
Overall I think IE8 is a step in the right direction for Microsoft. IE becoming more standards compliant makes it easier on everyone, and they've added a few nice features (my favorite being the Fx-like search). Even though they've added some features that Fx and other browsers do not have, it still seems like they are playing catchup in the browser game. The only new feature that I miss when I go back to Fx3 is the Accelerators, and that's probably available in some add-on that I just haven't come across yet.
In other news: holy shit! Hard drives are cheap! I found a 640 GB, 7200 rpm, SATAII Seagate hdd with 32 MB cache for only $65.00 on Newegg. My virutal server is starting to kill me with it's 120 GB capacity and I'm constantly having to delete virtual machines I really don't want to.
