This is a staggering change. Either this is an artifact of the way that StatCounter is capturing browser data or a very large organization(s) suddenly switched the default browser that it allowed its customers to use.

Does anyone have any insight into why this may have occurred?

Unlike a lot of people who are using Windows 7 and commenting on the new features and functionality, I am here to comment on how well it works with someone who is ingrained in a Windows XP workflow to get his job done.

As a virtual machine (2 processors, 1GB RAM, 40GB disk), Windows 7 is not as resource intensive as Vista threatened to be, and is just as responsive as my XP virtual machine is with the same machine configuration.

Subtle changes to the Start Menu and the Task Bar are easy to adapt to, and so far all of my applications run smoothly (I am using mainly Microsoft applications, so this should not be surprising).

My virtual machine doesn’t have an Aero compatible video card, so I don’t get all of the cool transparencies and visual effects, but frankly those are eye-candy. I need an OS that just works, and so far, Windows 7 lives up to expectations.

The most surprising thing is that there are no surprises. Building on 2-3 years of Vista development and improving the performance means that most applications already run efficiently. The only complaint I suppose is that the OS takes up a very substantial amount of the 40GB disk. However, as this is not the OS where I store media, pictures, etc., I am not as concerned as I would be if this was my primary computer.

That said, on an old Dell Latitude D610 (60 GB disk, 2 GB RAM, single core processor carved by cavemen) that I installed this the same OS on, it is running fine, except for a large amount of fan action that I didn’t hear when the same machine was running Ubuntu 9.04. As well, this older machine has no apps on it, other than Skype, and it has a large amount of the 60BG of disk still left.

Overall, as a day-to-day user of Windows, I am satisfied that Windows 7 is a giant leap over Vista, and I am looking forward to migrating my work permanently to this OS.

In other parts of the world, the adoption of the new version of Internet Explorer is substantially slower, and affected by regional differences in the browser population. Europe is notable in this as MSIE8 has just overtaken Opera 9.6 in the browser population in the last week.

In Asia, Internet Explorer 8 has moved into fourth in browser share, but is a substantially lower percentage of the population than the top three browsers. In a frightening statistic, Internet Explorer 6 is the most popular browser in Asia, indicating that path to adoption may be longer in this region.

Overall the adoption of this new browser as a replacement for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 is slow and steady. MSIE8 does not appear to be significantly cutting into the Firefox population, but this could change as people begin to hear more about the features of the new browser, and Web sites begin to be designed to its features, rather than those of MSIE6 and MSIE7.

Well, now I have proof of this.

Using data from our good friends at StatCounter, this graph leaped from the screen and nearly exploded my mind.

The pattern in the data is clear, if you are paying attention, which I haven’t been. The dips that appear in the Internet Explorer stats occur on weekends.

That means that many of the Internet Explorer 6.0 users are only using it because it is forced on them by their IT departments.

Why?

Dear IT professionals of the world: Internet Explorer 6.0 is an exploit waiting to happen and a barrier to inventive Web development. Please upgrade. Thank you.

In Europe, MSIE7 and Firefox 3 are effectively tied for the lead as the most dominant browser, followed distantly by MSIE6. As in North America, MSIE8 has substantially increased it’s market share since its March 19 2009 release, but it has not caught up to Europe’s favorite son, Opera 9.6.

What is clear is that MSIE8’s gain is MSIE7’s loss. Comparing March 1-19 with April 1-19, the shift away from MSIE7 is almost equal to the shift to MSIE8, meaning that people that are upgrading to MSIE8 in Europe are doing so, in the most part, directly from MSIE7.

There is little or no change to the MSIE6 install base, indicating that this is an entrenched population, likely in large corporations or government agencies.

Like in North America, the big factor to watch is how quickly the MSIE6 population decreases. Europe already has an entrenched population of alternative browser users, mostly with Firefox 3. When Opera 10 and Firefox 3.1 are released, it is likely that these people will move directly to these browsers.

What remains to be seen is how the strong anti-Microsoft sentiment in Europe affects the adoption of MSIE8.

Its performance gains and light weight were impressive. But its invasion of my system was uncalled for.

No matter which browser you set to be the default browser, Chrome 2.0 prevents that browser from regaining control. If you click a link in another program, Chrome launches, even if you set MSIE or Firefox or Safari as the default browser.

I thought that kind of behavior was behind browser manufacturers.

In the 10 days since its public release, MSIE8 has made a run up the charts. Courtesy of the great folks at StatCounter and their public analytics data, this growing browser share for MSIE8 can be easily followed.

In the US, prior to its release, MSIE8 RC1 was in sixth position behind even the old battleship Firefox 2.0, but ahead of Chrome 1.0.

In the week following its release, MSIE has quickly surpassed Firefox 2.0 browser share in the US. I am not really sure who these Firefox 2.0 users are, but they and the MSIE6 users must be found and encouraged to immediately upgrade.

The values for the first week don’t tell the entire story. As it enters its second week of general availability, MSIE8 continues to increase its share of the browser market, moving into fourth place in StatCounters US stats, overtaking Safari 3.2.

What does t his mean? While it still has a long way to go before it comes close to approaching even the dinosaur, MSIE6, it has to be said that this growth in MSIE8 browser share has occurred without the use of Windows Update. People are making a conscious decision to switch to and use MSIE8.

Site and application designers will need to take heed – MSIE8 compatibility initiatives will have to be in place yesterday rather than some vague time in the future.

The Web performance focus for most firms is simple: How quickly can code/text/images/flash can be transferred to the desktop?

The question that needs to be asked now is: What effect does my content have on the browser and the underlying OS when it arrives at the desktop?

Emphasis is now put on the speed and efficiency of Web pages inside browsers. How much CPU/RAM does the browser consume? Are some popular pages more efficient than others? Does continuous use of a browser for 8-12 hours a day cripple a computers ability to do other tasks?

The performance measurement will include instrumenting of the browser. This will not be to capture the content performance, but the browser performance. Through extensions, plugins, accelerators, whatever browsers will be able to report the effect of long-term use of the health of the computer and how it degrades the perceived performance over time.

Many solutions for page-performance tracking have been implemented using Javascript tags, etc. What would be interesting to many developer is to see the long-term effects of the Web on certain browsers. This information could be tagged with specific event markers, DOM events, plugin usage (Flash, Silverlight, Java), and other items that indicate what events truly effect the browser.

Most browsers provide users and developers tools to debug pages. But what if this data was made globally available? What would it tell us about the containers we use to interact with our world?

The switch to InnoDB was done because of the locking issues that were occurring during long queries, especially when doing ad-hoc analysis. The row-level (versus table-level) locking of InnoDB has removed most of these issues.

I have been seeing some strange behavior with the new engine. As a result of this, I will be re-starting the database engine twice a day. There should be no degradation, as this is simply a daemon re-start, not a machine re-start.

To remind folks what the challenge was (and is for some of the linux dev teams out their who claim to support older platforms): Install a fully-functioning OS on a laptop machine built in 1999/2000 without a CD drive.

DSL has a great boot floppy image that works with their embedded version of the OS installed on a Flash drive – ok, the flash drive made the challenge less problematic than originally described.

However, I lay the challenge out to all of the Linux distros: Create an across the INTERNET (not that crazy PXE boot stuff) install that can be started with boot floppies.

The B2131 has a large enough hard drive and enough power to run Xubuntu, but installing it easily (i.e. my 10 year-old son could do it) makes modern linux distros completely unreachable for people trying to easily make old machines go.

So, linux geeks, think you can do this?