Microsoft's IE9 off limits to most Windows PCs
Two-thirds of the world's Windows machines still run XP, which can't run IE9
By Gregg Keizer
September 16, 2010 01:45 PM ET
Computerworld - Microsoft may have a tough time building significant market share for its new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser because eligible users are in the minority.
Several analysts agreed that Microsoft has its work cut out for it, at least in the short term, because IE9 won't run on Windows XP, the aged-but-still-dominant operating system.
Microsoft omitted the still-popular XP from the supported OS list because, among other things, IE 9 speeds up page rendering and composition by tapping the graphics processor in newer PCs.
Windows XP lacks support for the Direct2D API, which IE9 uses to accelerate content rendering.