Following up on the release of Internet Explorer Platform Preview 3 last week, Lionel Menchaca Dell’s chief blogger took it for a spin. In this guest post, Lionel shares his impressions.
Microsoft’s release of the latest Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview brings a new level of hardware acceleration to the web. I took some time to play around with IE9 trying several of the demos on the IE Test Drive site. In a word, I’d say I’m “impressed.”
In a lot of ways, people tend to relegate web browsing to the low-end of computing hardware spectrum along with activities like e-mail and other basic productivity apps. I think that could very well change with the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer 9.
Hardware acceleration in this case means offloading computing cycles from the system processor (CPU) to the graphics processor (GPU) in your system. Letting the GPU handle graphic-intensive tasks makes sense because GPUs are better at handling these tasks than the CPU. That efficiency translates into more overall speed and less battery life required (which is kinda important when you’re talking about laptops, netbooks and other mobile devices). Microsoft’s approach to new web technologies like HTML5 is new. They use Direct2D and DirectDraw, two components of DirectX that are supported in Windows 7 and Vista. Dean Hachamovitch refers to it as running through Windows.
So what does this mean to the average user when they are surfing the web?
Here’s what I’d love to see happen: bring hardware acceleration to web browsing for desktops, laptops and netbooks. Seems like Microsoft is well on its way delivering that. Then bring it to smaller mobile devices. The end result is something that’s good for hardware geeks and casual technology users alike. Empowering a range of devices that can do more on the web, using standards-based web technology all more efficiently than before?
Sign me up.
Lionel Menchaca, Dell
More...
Microsoft’s release of the latest Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview brings a new level of hardware acceleration to the web. I took some time to play around with IE9 trying several of the demos on the IE Test Drive site. In a word, I’d say I’m “impressed.”
In a lot of ways, people tend to relegate web browsing to the low-end of computing hardware spectrum along with activities like e-mail and other basic productivity apps. I think that could very well change with the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer 9.
Hardware acceleration in this case means offloading computing cycles from the system processor (CPU) to the graphics processor (GPU) in your system. Letting the GPU handle graphic-intensive tasks makes sense because GPUs are better at handling these tasks than the CPU. That efficiency translates into more overall speed and less battery life required (which is kinda important when you’re talking about laptops, netbooks and other mobile devices). Microsoft’s approach to new web technologies like HTML5 is new. They use Direct2D and DirectDraw, two components of DirectX that are supported in Windows 7 and Vista. Dean Hachamovitch refers to it as running through Windows.
So what does this mean to the average user when they are surfing the web?
- More speed
- The need for fewer proprietary web plug-ins
- Improved efficiency
Here’s what I’d love to see happen: bring hardware acceleration to web browsing for desktops, laptops and netbooks. Seems like Microsoft is well on its way delivering that. Then bring it to smaller mobile devices. The end result is something that’s good for hardware geeks and casual technology users alike. Empowering a range of devices that can do more on the web, using standards-based web technology all more efficiently than before?
Sign me up.
Lionel Menchaca, Dell
More...