IE9 Beta First Impressions

Curious because Internet Explorer 9 somehow made it onto the twitter trending topics twice in one day, I decided to give it a try.  Heading to Beauty of the web, I downloaded the beta and opened it, and immediately thought I had opened Chrome by accident.  Well, I was wrong.  Here are some things I noted while playing with the beta:

* Improved interface:  The tabs are now on the top of the window, next to the navigation bar.  Speaking of the navigation bar, it acts like the navigation bar in Chrome, allowing you to search the web (Bing) right from it.  The home, favorites, and settings buttons are now neatly tucked in a corner, and not in your face like in previous versions of IE.

* Faster rendering:  I would be lying if I did not say that I was not impressed by the speed of the browser.  Microsoft is trying really hard to pull users back to it's product, and it's obvious that speed is how they are doing it.

* Just faster:  I remember using IE7 and IE8, and wanting to open a new tab.  Well, it tabs took forever to open in IE 7 and 8.  Not so in IE9.  I held CTRL+T, and tabs opened instantly.  Also, it's blowing the competition away in benchmarks.

I would be lying if I did not say that I was impressed with the beta, but I would also be lying if I did not say that I kept thinking and wishing I was using Chrome.  IE9 is a big improvement over IE8, but will it be enough to fend off Firefox and Chrome?  We will have to wait and see.