I have to agree with the OP... I'm typically a Firefox guy, but IE8 is definately loading faster for me than FF at the moment. I can click to launch FF and then click IE and IE8 will be waiting at the home page for me while FF is still loading. Benchmarks aside.... that's my experience!
Guys you are talking about actually loading the browser the first time? Well of course IE loads faster, it is partially preloaded by Microsoft as part of the OS. It has always been that way.
But heck. I just leave it run for hours and load it once. Once it is loaded it is much faster browser than IE. IE is the slowest browser for running just about anything.
If fast launch is a big deal for you, you can use Firefox Preloader so it will do the same thing as IE.
Firefox Preloader | Download Firefox Preloader software for free at SourceForge.net
I never liked IE myself. I've been a Firefox user for years. The one thing I never really liked about IE is that it takes roughly 3 seconds for it to stop loading a page when you click the "stop" button, whereas Firefox does it right on the spot instead. Firefox has on general, loaded pages faster than IE from what I've seen.
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