The company, which often proclaims its new releases as revolutionary, has been very low key about Snow Leopard. For many months, Apple (AAPL) has made it clear the new OS wouldn’t sport new eye-popping features, but would instead be focused on what it calls “refinements” and “fine-tuning.” Perhaps its biggest new feature is something only a minority of Mac owners will ever use: built-in compatibility with Microsoft’s Exchange corporate email, calendar and contacts service.

Snow Leopard is priced accordingly, at just $29 for people upgrading from Leopard. That’s $100 less than what Leopard cost. And it’s $90 less than what Microsoft plans to charge upgraders for the main consumer version of its next version of Windows, called Windows 7, which is due out Oct. 22. Windows 7 is also an iteration on its predecessor, rather than a revolutionary new product, though it has some nice tweaks and will be a more dramatic improvement due to Vista’s failings. I’ll have a full review of it closer to its release.

I’ve been testing Snow Leopard on three Macs—an older desktop and a laptop of my own that I upgraded from Leopard, and a new MacBook Pro laptop Apple lent me for testing with Snow Leopard pre-installed. I found Snow Leopard easy to install, faster than Leopard, compatible with my most commonly used software and peripherals, and filled with a number of small, useful refinements and additions.

One delightful change: Snow Leopard takes up less than half the room on a hard disk that Leopard did, and Apple says the average user who upgrades will free up about 7 gigabytes of space. On my 2008-vintage MacBook Pro, I gained back a whopping 14 gigabytes.

But I also encountered a number of bugs and glitches, and a few incompatibilities, including a wildly wrong guess by Snow Leopard about which driver to use for an older, lightly used printer on one of my upgraded Macs. (It did fine with my main printer.)

Overall, I believe Snow Leopard will help keep the Mac an appealing choice for computer buyers, and I can recommend it to existing Mac owners seeking more speed and disk space, or wanting to more easily use Exchange. But I don’t consider Snow Leopard a must-have upgrade for average consumers. It’s more of a nice-to-have upgrade. If you’re happy with Leopard, there’s no reason to rush out and get Snow Leopard.

For some current Mac owners, Snow Leopard isn’t an option. About 20% of them are still using older models that aren’t powered by the Intel (INTC) processors Apple currently uses. Snow Leopard simply won’t work on these machines, including models designated as G4 or G5 and sold as recently as 2006.

And, for owners of Intel-based Macs who are still using the older Tiger version of the Mac OS, Apple is officially making Snow Leopard available only in a “boxed set” that includes other software and costs $169. The reasoning is that these folks never paid the $129 back in 2007 to upgrade to Leopard. But here’s a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I found in testing Snow Leopard:

Installation

Snow Leopard comes in one version, rather than the multiple operating system versions favored by Microsoft (MSFT). And that single version handles hardware and software based on both a standard computer technology, called 32-bit, and a newer one, called 64-bit, which can use much more memory and is faster.

Both my desktop and laptop Macs converted to Snow Leopard quickly and smoothly, in about 45 minutes each. Unlike the upgrade process Microsoft is requiring to get to Windows 7 from Windows XP, the Snow Leopard upgrade preserves all your files, settings and programs where they previously existed, right down to your desktop icons and wallpaper. No disk wiping, file moving, or program re-installation is required. And, as noted above, you actually gain disk space, because Apple has slimmed down the OS and also automatically removes or compresses old system files (not your personal data) that are no longer needed or used often.

However, I did run into a couple of minor problems: on one of my Macs, a screen saver displaying certain of my photos didn’t work after the switch. Other photos did work. Apple says this is a bug it will fix.

Speed

After changing to Snow Leopard, my Macs worked faster. I already considered them pretty speedy, so the overall effect wasn’t mind-blowing. But Snow Leopard’s built-in programs, like Mail, the Safari browser, and the Finder—Apple’s equivalent of the Windows Explorer—have all been rewritten behind the scenes, so these and other specific features are now a lot quicker. I found that email folders stuffed with thousands of messages opened almost instantly, and copying files was noticeably faster, even when the destination was on the Internet or a network. The Safari 4 browser, already very fast with Leopard, is even speedier under Snow Leopard, especially on more complex Web sites that use a popular technology called Javascript.

New Features

True to its word, Apple has built few new features into Snow Leopard, and, except for Exchange (explained below), these are small. One touted feature is called Dock Expose, which allows you to see small versions of all the open windows in any running program by clicking on its icon in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. But this is mostly a reworking of a feature that already has been on the Mac.

Apple’s QuickTime video player has been upgraded, with a clean new interface for playback, and the new ability to record and trim videos. Icons can be more easily enlarged, and you can preview the files they represent, even playing videos in miniature or paging through multipage PDF or PowerPoint files.

My three favorite tweaks, barely mentioned by Apple:

• “Substitutions,” which is like the auto-correct feature in Microsoft Word, but extends the concept to Apple’s email and other programs;
• the ability for Snow Leopard to automatically reset the time zone on the Mac’s clock based on your location while traveling;
• and a new built-in function in QuickTime that allows you to record videos of actions you take on the Mac’s screen.

Exchange

Although Exchange is a widely used Microsoft server product, employed by many, many companies to manage employees’ email, calendars, and contacts, it isn’t built into Windows. To use Exchange, you have to buy add-on software, usually Microsoft’s Outlook for Windows PCs. It also hasn’t been built into the Mac OS, and usually required Mac owners to buy Microsoft’s Entourage program. But, with Snow Leopard, Apple is building Exchange right into the operating system, so it works with Apple’s free, built-in email, calendar and contact programs.

With the generous help of my company’s IT folks, I tested this feature, and it worked very well. All my corporate information flowed into Apple’s programs, very quickly, and I could search the company directory, check the calendars of people with whom I wished to schedule meetings, and more.

However, Apple makes setting up this new feature look simpler than it is. In most cases, I believe, it will require the time and cooperation of corporate IT personnel, who will need time to learn it—especially since, at many companies, relatively few of these folks are Mac experts. In my case, an Apple employee had to help my IT colleagues and me to get it going. But you likely won’t have that aid.

Compatibility and Glitches

Commonly used third-party programs, like the Mac versions of Microsoft Office, the Firefox browser, and Adobe Reader, all worked fine in my tests after the upgrade. But a few things didn’t. Apple admitted I had found a few bugs and said that some software makers will have to upgrade their software because the programs rely on under-the-hood components that have changed in Snow Leopard.

VMware’s Fusion program for running Windows simultaneously with the Mac operating system worked, and I was able to use Windows. But it was a bit glitchy. VMware (VMW) provided me with a forthcoming new version tailored for Snow Leopard’s changed underlying architecture, which worked perfectly.

A Cisco (CSCO) program used to connect to corporate virtual private networks caused one of my test machines to completely crash, a rarity on Macs. But Snow Leopard now contains the same Cisco VPN connector as a built-in feature, and that worked perfectly.

Snow Leopard didn’t properly recognize my older-model Verizon (VZ) cellular modem card, though I was still able to use the card by digging into Apple’s network preferences screen. Apple says this is a bug it will fix.

As noted above, Snow Leopard didn’t work at first with an older networked printer on one of my test Macs, and thought it was a laser printer instead of an inkjet. I did get it working, by manually selecting a different printer driver, but Apple admits this is a bug it will have to fix.

Finally, the Time Machine backup file on one of my Macs stopped working. With my permission, Apple examined the file using a diagnostic tool and claimed it had become corrupted a couple of months ago, before the upgrade, and that Snow Leopard merely exposed the problem. I have no way of knowing if this is true, but Time Machine did work perfectly on the two other test Macs.

Underlying Technologies

In addition to greater 64-bit capability, Snow Leopard has two other big under-the-hood additions. One, called Grand Central Dispatch, makes it easier for developers to write programs that make better use of the multiple “cores,” or processing units, in modern processors. The other, called OpenCL, makes it easier for developers to offload some non-graphics tasks to today’s potent graphics chips. These are very important, especially for power-hungry tasks like video production and high-end gaming, but Microsoft is building similar capabilities into Windows 7, and they won’t really matter on either platform until third-party developers make use of them, which will take time.

Bottom Line

Apple already had the best computer operating system in Leopard, and Snow Leopard makes it a little better. But it isn’t a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn’t a typical Apple lust-provoking product.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

http://allthingsd.com/20090721/second-chances-t-mobile-tries-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20090721/second-chances-t-mobile-tries-again/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:08:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090721/second-chances-t-mobile-tries-again/ As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But it never hurts to try. This week, I tested the T-Mobile myTouch 3G with Google (GOOG), which is the company’s second chance at introducing a “Google phone” to the masses.

Google’s first device, called the T-Mobile G1, came out in October and was less than a sensation. The phone had a touch screen and a handy slide-out physical keyboard, but it was bulky and unattractive. It came with just one gigabyte of memory and lacked important features like compatibility with Microsoft Exchange for use with work email. Its app store, called the Android Market, offered only about 50 applications. The G1 launched with surprisingly few accessories.

The $200 (with two-year contract) T-Mobile myTouch 3G (t-mobilemytouch.com) available Aug. 5, has fixed many of these problems. Its new design uses an on-screen keyboard, which gives it a thinner, more stylish build that feels great in the hand. It now comes with four gigabytes of memory, works with Microsoft Exchange and can record and play back video footage. The Android Market has increased its number of apps to about 6,300, and the myTouch will hit stores with accessories like designer shells and docking stations. Its combined voice and data plans are at least $25 less per month than what AT&T’s (T) plans cost for users of Apple’s competing iPhone.

But while using it, I couldn’t help thinking that the myTouch felt less like a new device and more like what the G1 should have been in the first place.

The myTouch, which is built by HTC of Taiwan, runs on an improved version of Google’s operating system, that performs tasks faster has a more streamlined look and supports stereo Bluetooth connections. But it carries on many traits of its predecessor. It still synchronizes over the air with Google account information including email, calendar and contacts. Swiping a finger to the left or right on the myTouch’s home screen will still open other screens, with space for icons representing apps. And its handy window-shade-like Notifications menu can still be pulled down onto the screen at any time to show a list of new messages.

The most dramatic difference on the myTouch is its on-screen keyboard, which may frustrate some people who liked the G1 for its because it had a physical keyboard and a touch screen. Like on Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, the myTouch keyboard corrects words as you type, recognizing you’ll make more mistakes on it than you would on a physical keyboard. The keyboard suggests words in a horizontal bar that appears above the keyboard and below the text area. You need only type “Washi” and the word “Washington” appears in this bar for you to select. These shortcuts speed up the otherwise frustrating process of on-screen typing.

Unlike on the iPhone, the myTouch keyboard’s keys don’t get larger as your finger hovers over them so as to help you touch the right key. Nor does a word become magnified when you’re trying to place the cursor at a certain spot. The myTouch’s trackball can be used to pinpoint a specific letter but I usually forgot all about the trackball, opting to use the responsive touch screen for navigation.

T-Mobile offers much less expensive monthly plans for the myTouch than AT&T offers for the iPhone. The cheapest voice and data plan from T-Mobile costs $55 compared with AT&T’s $70. Unlimited data and messaging plus minimum voice plans total $65 for T-Mobile and $90 for AT&T. And AT&T’s messaging is currently limited to text, while T-Mobile messaging includes text, picture and video.

On the other hand, T-Mobile offers 3G coverage in far fewer cities than AT&T. The myTouch comes with only a fourth of the built-in memory of the same-priced the 3GS iPhone, and half the memory of the 3G iPhone model, which is costs half the price. And myTouch offers only about a tenth of the apps the iPhone offers, and has a smaller screen.

T-Mobile wants myTouch users to understand apps and download them, starting with the AppPack: a package of eight to 10 apps that T-Mobile will send to myTouch customers via an SMS with a link. Customers can peruse this list of apps and download just the ones they choose. While some people may not appreciate receiving apps suggestions, it could also introduce apps to people who didn’t know how they worked.

The Android Market, where all apps for Google’s phones can be found and purchased,still isn’t as well organized as it should be. It separates games from other applications and organizes them by popularity and date, but doesn’t separate those that are free and those that must be bought. I downloaded several free apps including WordGame, Facebook, Twitter, Sketch-a-Etch and Sherpa. But I was especially irked by the way some of the apps I downloaded kept trying to get me to download additional apps every time I opened them. The Twitter app, which was listed as one of the most popular, displayed prompts to download browsers and RSS readers—even six days after I first used the app. An on-screen message gave me the option to “Ignore Forever,” but this apparently didn’t include prompts to download other programs. Any user would be confused and irritated by these unsolicited messages. Google said that was what the developer chose to do—a major downside to the Android’s open model.

The myTouch’s 3.2-megapixel camera and video camera worked well and started up quickly. An icon labeled Gallery neatly holds still images and videos. And the myTouch has simple ways to upload photos to Picasa or videos to YouTube.

A built-in tool for Google Web searches using voice commands worked remarkably well, even when I tried to trip it up by saying four words at once. It didn’t recognize my last name, but I’ll let it off the hook since it’s spelled differently than it sounds.

The T-Mobile myTouch 3G costs $50 more than the G1, but its extra features are worthwhile. Be ready for a frustrating first-time experience with the on-screen keyboard and try to read user comments in the Android Market to figure out which apps prompt you to download additional programs.

The myTouch is what we expected from Google the first time around. Time will tell if people are ready to give it a second chance.

—Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to
Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090721/second-chances-t-mobile-tries-again/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/ http://allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 01:06:06 +0000 Nick Wingfield http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/ When the cheap laptops known as netbooks first came out over a year ago, computer makers were able to offer them at low prices in part by shipping them with the free Linux open-source operating system, rather than Microsoft’s Windows. Since then, Windows netbooks have taken over most of the market after Microsoft began pushing Windows XP aggressively to netbook makers and consumers realized Linux netbooks didn’t work well with some popular applications and devices.

Linux on netbooks isn’t going away though. In fact, software and hardware companies have been making big investments to improve Linux netbooks. For the past week, I’ve been using several flavors of Linux running on netbooks — Ubuntu, Hewlett-Packard’s Mi (which is based on Ubuntu) and Moblin, created largely by Intel and not yet available commercially. In all cases, the Linux netbooks failed at some basic functions that any laptop, no matter how tiny and inexpensive, should be able to handle, like working with printers. At the same time, Mi and Moblin have impressive graphical user interfaces well-suited to the habits of typical netbook users, like checking email and accessing social-networking sites, as well as the small screens and low horsepower of tiny laptops. In addition to Linux, all of the computers shared the standard features, or lack thereof, common among netbooks, including compact keyboards and no DVD drives.

H-P’s Mini 110 Mi Edition

The most polished of the products was H-P’s Mini 110 Mi Edition, a new model with a 10.1-inch screen that H-P will begin selling on its Web site for $279.99 on June 10. That’s nearly $50 less than what H-P will charge for the Mini 110 running Windows XP, which will come with a 160-gigabyte hard drive instead of the 8-gigabyte solid-state drive that will come with the Mi edition.

The striking thing about this netbook is the slick graphical user interface created by H-P that runs on top of Ubuntu and first began appearing on H-P netbooks early this year. Instead of a traditional desktop like that found in Windows and the Mac, Mi (pronounced “me”) arranges commonly used applications and content on a screen called the “dashboard,” which looks like a personalized Web page and lists recently received emails, fresh thumbnail images of favorite Web sites, and a Web-search toolbar.

The Mi home screen is a clever way to make the computer seem alive with on- and off-line content, which is fitting since netbooks are designed for on-the-go Internet activities. It’s also tailor-made for the small screen size of netbooks.

A more eye-catching iteration of Linux is Moblin, which I tried out in test form on an Acer netbook; it is expected to ship on netbooks by the end of the year. Moblin has a menu of icons at the top of the screen, the most interesting of which leads to the M-Zone, a home screen that displays calendar appointments and favorite applications alongside snapshots of recently visited sites and a continuous feed from the user’s Twitter network.

An icon called “People” leads to a list of instant-messaging buddies, while another, called “Zones,” let me organize all the applications I had launched into different virtual workspaces, which is useful for hopping between various tasks on a small-screen device like a netbook.

The look and feel of the standard Ubuntu system, without the Mi interface, is more commonplace. I tried out a Dell Mini 10 with a 10.1-inch display and 160-gigabyte hard drive that sells for $349 on Dell’s Web site. The Mini 10 ships with version 8.04 of Ubuntu, which resembles Windows XP, with its desktop, taskbar and pop-up menu system. Ubuntu, in some cases, seemed to overestimate the size of the Dell Mini’s display: A window for configuring wireless-networking capabilities was so large it bled off the screen, and I couldn’t access all the buttons on it. I also installed on the Dell a new version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which works better on small screens. Since a Windows XP version of the Dell Mini 10 sells for the same price as the Ubuntu, I can’t see a compelling reason to choose the Ubuntu option.

All the netbooks I tried had compatibility problems with other external devices. The netbooks couldn’t load the software drivers to let me print to my Canon and Dell printers. I couldn’t load pictures over a USB cable from my Canon PowerShot SD750 digital camera. I was able to get my pictures on the machines by plugging a storage card from my camera directly into the netbooks.

Canonical, the London company that oversees development work on Ubuntu, says it is improving the system’s compatibility with various devices. Intel says it is unfair to judge Moblin until it is commercially available.

Some key applications currently don’t run on Linux, like Apple’s iTunes, which makes it difficult to load music files onto iPods from the netbooks. While the Linux laptops didn’t run Microsoft Office, they came with OpenOffice, a free package of word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications that allowed me to open and modify basic Word and Excel files.

The companies behind Linux netbooks have made great strides in improving user interfaces, but until they can achieve similar breakthroughs in how the machines work with other devices, Windows netbooks are still a better deal.

• Email nick.wingfield@wsj.com. Walter S. Mossberg is away and will return next Thursday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090506/using-pc-and-mac-interchangeably/ http://allthingsd.com/20090506/using-pc-and-mac-interchangeably/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 23:10:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20090506/using-pc-and-mac-interchangeably/ There’s no other major item most of us own that is as confusing, unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computers. Everybody has questions about them, and we aim to help.

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

---

I switched from PC to Mac a year ago, but now I am thinking of adding a Windows laptop. If I do, what kind of compatibility problem would I have? I would be using the laptop mostly to write, to send/receive email and to Web browse.

In the old days, there were compatibility problems, but most of those have gone away. Based on your simple predicted usage, I’d say that you should be fine. For instance, both Macs and PCs can interchangeably open and edit all of the major file types — JPG pictures, MP3 music, Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDF files, etc. Email and instant messages can, of course, be exchanged between the two platforms, even if you are using different programs. And Macs understand Windows file extensions. Also, you can use both platforms simultaneously on the same home network to access the Internet.

In some cases, you might need different programs to open the same files on the two platforms. But even that obstacle has greatly diminished. For instance, programs like the Firefox and Safari Web browsers, Adobe Reader, iTunes, Microsoft Office, Google Earth, Picasa, Photoshop and many others come in native versions for both platforms that can handle the same files. And, of course, Web-based programs like Gmail and Yahoo Mail work on both. Sometimes, the same programs have different features and user interfaces on Windows and Macs, but I haven’t found these differences hard to master.

The biggest problems for average users are Quicken, whose Mac version is inferior and incompatible; Internet Explorer, which is no longer made for the Mac; and Microsoft Outlook, which is replaced on the Mac by a program called Entourage that is similar but uses a different file format. And networking can be tricky. In general, the Mac does a better job of seeing Windows PCs on a network than Windows does of seeing Macs.

I use Outlook Express for my email, and I store a lot of mail in local folders. Is there a simple way to back these up? If I buy a new computer, can they be transferred?

Yes. There are two methods. One is a manual method, which Microsoft explains in a detailed document at this Web site: support.microsoft.com/kb/270670.

The other, quicker, method is to obtain one of several utility programs that can back up your Outlook Express data and, in some cases, allow you to transfer it to another PC. I haven’t tested these in years, and thus can’t recommend one over another. But one example is a free program called Outlook Express Backup, which can be found at genie-soft.com/products/oeb. Another is a $40 program called Outlook Express Backup Wizard, which can be found at: outlook-express-backup.com.

Do you know of an iPhone GPS application that speaks directions? It would make the iPhone similar to a TomTom or Garvin GPS unit.

A: No, but Apple recently announced that, under its new 3.0 operating system for the iPhone, such programs will be possible. Several companies are believed to be working on them, and I expect them to be available later in the year. The reason none exist yet is partly legal, having to do with the licensing of the underlying maps.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090506/using-pc-and-mac-interchangeably/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/ http://allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:02:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/ The Web browser is arguably the most important piece of software on a computer. No longer just a tool for perusing or searching for information, it has become, for many people, their principal communications medium, their photo album, their newspaper, social club, bank and shopping mall.

And, among Web browsers, by far the most popular is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, or IE, which comes on every new Windows computer. So when Microsoft (MSFT) changes Internet Explorer, those changes affect vast numbers of people, and the Web itself. This week, Microsoft is changing its browser in a major way. On Thursday, the company will release IE8, the biggest overhaul of Internet Explorer in years.

I’ve been testing IE8 for months, first using its prerelease versions and, more recently, the final version. I’ve found it to be a big improvement over its predecessor, IE7, and a much closer competitor to its main rival, Mozilla’s Firefox. IE8 is more stable than IE7, more compatible with industrywide Web standards, and packed with new features that improve navigation, search, ease of use, privacy and security.

Some of these features can’t be matched out of the box by its main rival browsers. For instance, related tabs are color-coded, the search field can show images along with text, you can get instant fly-out maps of place names in Web pages, and you can easily hide your tracks online from the prying eyes of advertisers.

But, in my tests, IE8 wasn’t as fast as Firefox, or two other notable browsers — the Windows version of Apple’s (AAPL) new Safari 4 and Google’s (GOOG) Chrome. IE8 loaded a variety of pages I tested more slowly than any of the other browsers, and it grew sluggish when juggling a large number of Web pages opened simultaneously in tabs.

For that reason, I can’t say that IE8 dethrones my previous browser champ, Firefox. If you’re a light-duty user and attracted to the new IE’s strong suite of fresh features, you might prefer it to Firefox. But if you would be bothered by the speed difference, or the slowdown I saw under a heavy load, Firefox would still be better.

The new IE8 lets you see images in results from the built-in search box and quickly switch sources.

Microsoft is making IE8 available, free, at noon EDT Thursday, for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, at microsoft.com/ie8. A version also will be tailored for the forthcoming Windows 7, the next edition of the company’s operating system. But that version won’t be available until the next prerelease iteration of Windows 7 comes out. It will also be automatically offered via the Windows Update system over the next few months.

Unlike its competitors, IE8 won’t be available in a Macintosh version, though I found it worked fine on a Mac that is running Windows alongside the Mac’s own operating system.

Favorites and Tabs

This new Internet Explorer looks a bit different, right away. It finally displays, by default, the old Links bar, now renamed the Favorites Bar. This is a toolbar near the top of the screen where you can store your most-used Web sites or folders containing groups of frequently visited sites, for convenient access. It’s like the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox or the Bookmarks Bar in Safari. This bar was available in older versions of IE, but was hidden unless you turned it on.

And this Favorites Bar has a couple of nice features. There’s a one-click button that will add any Web site to the bar, as opposed to adding it to the longer Favorites list of less-frequently visited sites. And, to help fit as many sites as possible on the bar, IE8 has a command that automatically condenses the titles of the entries.

There are also big changes in the way tabbed browsing works. In IE8, tabs you open from links on the same Web site are grouped together and color-coded. And when you have too many tabs to see at once, you can click on a button to see mini images of the pages they represent, or, alternatively, you can get a quick text list of all of them.

In addition, when you create a new, empty tab, IE8 displays a number of choices inside the page. These include the ability to reopen tabs you’ve closed or to perform various actions on text you’ve copied, such as emailing or blogging it.

There also is an optional Suggested Sites feature, which pops up a list of other Web pages that might be similar to, or related to, the page you’re viewing. This feature doesn’t always do a great job, but when it works, it’s handy. For example, when I was reading the BBC’s Web site and clicked Suggested Sites, IE8 listed a variety of other British news sources I hadn’t bookmarked.

Addresses and Search

Like the other major Web browsers, IE8 now also makes smart suggestions about what you might be looking for when you type something into its address bar or its search box. In the address bar, these are based on your history and your Favorites. In the search box, they are based on suggestions from whatever search engine you choose to view in the box, plus your history. All of these suggestions are organized nicely. (If you are using Windows XP, you must install Microsoft’s desktop search product for all of these features to work.)

But the IE8 search box does two cool things the other browsers don’t. First, it allows search engines to show images in the search results that drop down from the box, something Microsoft calls Visual Search. With some providers, like Google, you don’t see images, at least not today. But with others, such as Wikipedia and Amazon (AMZN), images show up.

Microsoft’s new browser IE8 includes a feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific tasks on Web pages.

Second, and more important, IE8′s search box lets you switch search providers on the fly by just clicking on an icon at the bottom of the results list. So, for instance, you could type in Red Sox, see the results in, say, Google, and then without retyping your search term, almost instantly get different results from Yahoo (YHOO) or from Microsoft’s Live Search engine, by just clicking their icons.

Surfing Tools

IE8 includes a new feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific actions on any text you select in a Web page, often without taking you to a new page. When you select text, a light-blue icon appears near it. When you click on that icon, you get a list of options. For instance, you can translate the text to another language, email it, blog it or, if it’s a place name, map it.

Depending on which company’s services your chosen accelerator is using, these actions can happen right on the page you’re viewing, in a fly-out panel. For example, I selected the word “Beijing” in a news story, chose Map with Yahoo from the Accelerator list, and got a map showing Beijing in a small window atop the same page.

When you install IE8, Microsoft suggests you use its own set of accelerators, but gives you the option to choose from Google, Yahoo and other competitors. A full list of accelerators, search engines and other add-ons for IE8 is at ieaddons.com at the bottom left of the page.

Another nice feature is called WebSlices. This requires some effort on the part of Web page publishers and is on only a small number of pages right now. But it allows a user to add to her Favorites bar a constantly updating section of a Web site, complete with graphics, by just clicking a green icon that appears on the site. For instance, I added to my Favorites bar a slice that shows the top stories on digg.com.

Speed and Stability

Microsoft claims IE8 is very fast, but in my tests, speed and performance were its worst attributes. Using two computers, one running Windows XP and one running Windows Vista, I timed the loading of a half-dozen popular Web sites, plus two folders containing numerous news and sports sites. I repeated the test in IE8, and in Firefox, Safari 4 and Chrome. In every case, IE8 loaded the pages and folders more slowly than most of the other browsers, and in most cases it came in dead last.

In some instances, the differences were tolerable — a few seconds. In others, primarily the folders containing nine or 21 sites, respectively, IE8 took two or three times as long as one or more of the other browsers to complete the task. Microsoft conducted its own tests, which show IE8 winning similar tests, but I rely on mine, which I also use when evaluating its competitors. You can judge for yourself.

IE8 never totally crashed on me. This is partly because when one tab crashes, it’s designed to leave the others unaffected. However, in my tests on both machines, I found that IE8′s general operating speed — things like opening menus or switching among tabs — slowed down noticeably when I had 15 or 20 sites opened in tabs, even after they finished loading.

Security and Privacy

By contrast, IE8 shines in the areas of protecting you on the Web. Like other browsers, it warns you when a Web site you’ve reached might be a phishing page, designed to steal your identity, or a page that’s known to distribute malicious software. And, like others, IE8 allows you to conduct a private browsing session that won’t leave any history or other evidence on your own PC.

Color-coded tabs make it easy to organize searches.

But IE8 also has a feature, called InPrivate Filtering, that the company says will optionally allow you to surf multiple Web sites without leaving the kinds of tracks on Web servers that allow advertisers and others to know where you’ve been and what you did there. I was unable to test the effectiveness of this feature, but assuming it works, it’s a step forward in privacy.

Compatibility

IE8 had good compatibility with most Web sites I visited. But in some cases, it didn’t render a page properly. This is mainly because some sites were designed for older versions of IE, which used proprietary page-rendering features that made some sites look good only in IE. With the new version, Microsoft is moving away from those proprietary features.

To solve this problem, IE8 includes a compatibility button you can click that will cause the browser to behave like older versions of IE and render the page properly. You have to click the button only once for each page, and IE8 will automatically do it for you on subsequent visits.

Bottom Line

Internet Explorer 8 is a well-done advance on an important product used by most people to surf the Web. If it were faster, I would say it was the best browser currently available for Windows. But even so, it will be an improvement for current Internet Explorer users, and might even tempt some folks to switch.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

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