Cleartype wasn't originally developed for use in XP. It is developed by the typeface team at Microsoft ready for Vista, and the technology behind it is very interesting and very smart. However with the release of IE7 and XP SP3 they decided to reverse integrate it into XP.

You can also now download quite a useful cleartype tool for XP which allows proper setup of cleartype. It runs through a series of questions, making you pick type from a selection of examples to set the cleartype settings to your personal preferences. Once you have run through that utlity it does make a difference.
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I would be interested in seeing that utility. Cleartype is really no good for one's eyes in its default setup.
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The download for it can be found here.

There is an online version here.
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Are you sure about that? ClearType existed in XP pre-IE7.

Anyway, who's tried IE8 yet?
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Yep, I have IE8 installed on my main Vista 64bit system. Still don't like it compared to Opera and FF.

The download itself is huge, and then it has to go through about a 10 minute installation, setup and system configuration process, then a reboot which includes more waiting during the shut down process with the "updates are being installed" screen being shown, then after the reboot further finishing of of the installation. Quite mad.

And at the end of it? You get a browser which doesn't appear to be all that different to IE7.

Compare this to Opera. A 5MB download, with an installer that finishes setting it up very quickly. You can be using Opera within 5 minutes of starting to download it!

And what is one of IE8's "big new feature"? Standards based browsing and compatibility. How mad is that. Since the demise of Netscape, IE has been the only browser that hasn't comformed and complied to web standards. And if this is so, why are we getting lots of reports that many sites won't work correctly with IE8?

OK, I am being a bit unfair. IE8 now has add-ons. An idea directly stolen from Firefox, but the ability to expand its functionality is a good addition.

But for me the best addition and new idea in IE8 is something called accelerators. The ability to highlight some text on a webpage and then use an accelerator to instantly call up some information from another site is a very good new innovation. And there seem to be quite a few accelerators already written for IE to link you to the information from many different online resources. So you could highly an address and use an accelerator to instantly call up a map of its location. Or you can highlight a name and get some information about it from Wikipedia. Quite a cool idea, and it means you can now utilise the power of the internet as a source of information, without needing to leave the webpage you are currently viewing.

I've not tested IE8's cross browser compatibility fully yet, but am going to try some CSS and XHTML tests on it next week to see if it really does adhear to current web standards now.
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Well, personally, I only ever open IE when a new version comes along (well, gets forced upon me via Windows Update sometimes)

Anyway, I was a little excited about IE8 because of it's better 'standards' etc., but actually, I think it's crap.
Too similar to IE7, don't like the amount of time it takes to install (bloody ages!)
To me, it doesn't feel as nice as Firefox does.

Anyway, something strange about IE8 on my work PC .... it's placed all my favourites in the root of the C: drive, instead of it's usual location (C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Favorites)
WHY?
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Heh. I never even upgraded to IE7. What's the point?
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Because IE is integrated into the Windows shell, it acts as a Windows Update.
Updating IE also updates Windows Explorer (Windows Explorer uses the same DLL calls)
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I was going to try out IE7 when it first came out, then realised it required Windows XP. School got IE7 so I just tried it there.
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What windows version are you running then?
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