At least they've figured out what to call it.

Is this thing any good? Should I get it?

Judging by the comments, i'd run as far away as possible.

YMMV

Oh dear. I haven't installed IE7 yet.

MSIE 7 won't run on any of the systems I have access to. I won't hold my breath for MSIE 8.

That used to be my defence, but I've got XP on my new machines.

Wonder why they start talking about IE8 so soon after IE7? My guess is that IE7 hasn't become as popular as expected --not suprising IMO, since I've found IE7 unintuitive to use the few times I've tried it.

I think after taking so long to deliver IE7 that someone promised that future versions would be coming every 18 months or so . . . whether anyone wants it or not.
What I find interesting reading some of the comments (you'd need about an hour to wade through all of them) is the amount of frustration expressed at MS for not delivering anything that is near standards compliant.
I truly believe we are at a tipping point. With so many mobile browsers, a lot of people realizing they don't have to live with the default browser of their OS, and so much developer frustration, unless there is a major sea change IE is eventually doomed.

Many users don't like it, I think. I hear a lot of whining about it on mailing lists I'm on that aren't related to web design. It's not just about us, the end users are more important.

Well boo-hoo.
http://www.webstandards.org/2007/12/19/ie8...s-acid2-test-2/

that sounds good. but i think ill stick to firefox. somehow its reliable

Agreed. IE 5, 6, and 7 sucked, vista sucked, i don't see why IE8 will be any different. Hopefully it'll be good so the people who don't want to install firefox won't be stuck on a browser that doesn't even support W3C standards.