Hrm, it wont install on XP SP3 beta. Kinda odd, will have to look at it further when I get more time.

...nor will it install on Vista Business (no other beta software installed). Per the provided troubleshooting link, I disabled Live OneCare and ran the installer as administrator, still no luck. Interesting. Too bad, too. I'm anxious to try out IE's touted standards on some of the pages I develop.

Got it working. I'm a little disconcerted about the support, even though this is a beta. The troubleshooting guide referred me to %windir%\ie8.log, but the actual file is %windir%\ie8_main.log. None of the things they had me try using that log worked, but I found an error message on my own. Upon googling it, I found it had to do with EFS, which I have disabled on our domain via group policy. I re-enabled it and the install ran fine (though it couldn't download the updates). Just in case anyone else runs into this.

I'd just point out that this first beta is aimed at developers only. I don't think its fair to expect it to be as solid or reliable as IE 7.

Can they eat up more screen space with tool bars and such? That top portion of IE8 is FAT and ugly. It must be me, but why does Vista have so much wasted border/top menu space on their windows. It looks so cartonnish compared to OS X and Ubuntu.

oops missed a word: "hold our final judgements until it goes" gold :)

interface still hasn't improved. The people that design that really should talk to each other or give it to the office 2007 interface team

Ok, so I downloaded IE8 just to test it out, and it's so buggy I couldn't function with it. I know it's beta, but the thing is that when I went to reinstall IE7 here's what Microsoft.com says: "Your computer already has Internet Explorer 7. It is included with Windows Vista, the operating system you are running." uh... any ideas?

Alrighty then... Downloaded the XP SP2 version and successfully installed it on XP Pro SP3 RC2 with no problems encountered. Rebooted twice just to make sure it was all settled in (rebooting twice does help sometimes). Looks promising indeed, especially with all those new tools and Activities and such. It's most definitely buggy but that's to be expected although I think labeling this build a "beta" is stretching it a bit. I'd say it's behavior more represents a late alpha build at best. The thing that got me chuckling is that the sites IE 8.0 (in it's default "Super standards mode) has the most trouble with is any MS related site that I visited including MSN and even it's own "Welcome to IE 8.0" home page. Most exhibited broken scrolling where the site keeps popping back up to the top as you scroll downward. Other problems I found was in filling in text fields where highlighting didn't work and the cursor wouldn't follow the mouse (off by 3 or 4 letters). Be that as it may, it's a developer's build so I expect stuff like this and I'm looking forward to testing the thing out. MS deserves to commended for *finally* making the move towards adhering to web standards. In the meantime there's always the "Emulate IE 7.0" button and my main browser, Firefox of course.

"I'd rather not go that route as it will cause head aches with other apps" as far as fixing your problem goes, I have no idea, since I haven't tried IE7 yet. I'll wait until it gets closer to release before I attempt that, since I'm not actively developing anymore (I'm primarily a system builder). For the future, I'd suggest loading up a copy of Virtual PC and keep a backup VHD of a bare Windows installation so that you have something to test beta software on. When Hyper-V Server comes out, I plan on running that on my notebook for software compatibility testing and product demos on the go.