IE8 and NewsBusters and Other Ramblings

This is a response to a question posed by Hunter12 on an open thread.  He was having problems with IE8 and the NewsBusters website and was wondering if anyone else, using IE8 was also having problems.

My short answer is no problems what-so-ever.

Why is my answer helpful?  I don't think IE8 is an issue, per say, because my experience with NewsBusters is a good "test example" for IE8.  My internet computer crashed a few days ago so I went out and got a brand new low-end computer solely to use for email and internet related functions.  I have not loaded any other programs on this computer except a virus protection program.  With this new computer, NewsBusters is finally a joy to use.

My previous experiences with NewsBusters was abysmal, but I kept at it for almost two years because it was so much fun to visit, read, and comment on topics posted at NewsBusters.  My old internet computer was almost 10 years old.  It was running WindowsXP and didn't have much memory, maybe 194MB, I don't remember exactly.  But even when I visited NewsBusters on my main computer, with 2GB of memory, the website was still slow to load and hard to use.

Internet websites, and NB is a good example, use a lot of resources when you load them up.  If you have an older computer, you are bound to hit "critical mass" at some point and the NB site will become a pain to visit.  With my new computer, (which only has 3GB of memory and cost under $400), I can load multiple NB websites if I want to go back and read old posts while I am writing new ones.  Loading multiple NB websites would automatically crash my older computer and require reboots that would take forever.

To sum it up, I'm not saying to go out an buy a computer just so you can visit NewsBusters.  But many internet sites, and NB is a great example, take up a lot of resources and can push older computers to their limit.  (As a side note, you may want to reduce the number of threads viewed down to the lowest possible number.  I think the default is 300.)

I hope this is helpful.