Is it safe to use IE8 now?

Well I've been a long user of SpywareBlaster (and I've got to say I love it) but after reading up on a lot of the odd symptoms immunization programs appear to have on IE8 it makes me wonder whether or not it's safe to still use IE8 with SpywareBlaster now that SB has updated to 4.2.

IE8 seems to be hitting the auto-update soon and although I'm going to hold back a bit I'm curious to see if there have been any recent patches or changes that make it smoother to use now alongside with SB. If there hasn't, is the new version of SB resolving this issue at all? Or is this purely a Microsoft flop that needs to be solved but hasn't recently been addressed (yet?).

I've read up on the problems surrounding IE8 so I do know what seems to be causing the bizarre slow-downs people are feeling as well as other glitches so my concern isn't so much on the mechanics of the problem but its current status with other possible conflicting programs. I myself don't use IE at all, but a lot of the programs I have still use it with updating, etc. thus my usual focus on keeping it up-to-date and secure.

Thanks in advance for the input!

 

Hi,

Glad to hear you like the program.

IE8 did ship with a number of changes that have caused some odd problems and slowdowns. The most common one we've been able to reproduce is the slowdown when first starting IE8 - caused by a very large Restricted Sites list (a change introduced between the IE8 Release Candidate, which worked fine, and the final release). This is commonly triggered by using multiple products that add tons of sites to the Restricted Sites list in IE - SpywareBlaster, by itself, adds a much smaller listing which does not seem to cause nearly as noticable an effect. In addition, some of the tweaks we made in SpywareBlaster 4.2 help improve IE8 support and mitigate a few oddities.

As far as I'm aware, Microsoft hasn't released any patches to fix the underlying cause of this particular issue in IE8. There looks to be some sort of patch next Tuesday, which may bundle some changes/fixes, but could also just be a security update (although those have been known to change browser behavior).

That said, Microsoft is most definitely aware of the problem. And, from all indications on their IE blog, they're working on a thorough fix.

SpywareBlaster 4.2 makes a number of changes to work around some IE8 / Windows oddities which, coupled with its smaller Restricted Sites list, means it doesn't seem to trigger the terribly slow loading that much larger lists do. If you do encounter any oddities, it's simply a matter of temporarily unchecking the "Restricted Sites" protection until Microsoft puts out an official fix, but that shouldn't be necessary for the reasons mentioned above.

If you don't regularly open IE8 and use it for browsing, the potential should not exist for you to notice any of the issues. Regardless, I would recommend waiting until Microsoft offers IE8 via automatic updates if you're concerned about some of the reported IE8 oddities, because I'd expect fixes to be in place for a number of the issues by then.

Best regards,

-Javacool