For example: One day last month Cringester D. L. discovered when he logged onto the Net, he couldn't get to his e-mail or view Web pages. He then enjoyed several quality hours on the phone with Dell tech support, which determined the cause: His daughter had clicked a button and updated the browser to IE8 without telling him. The support tech logged onto his computer remotely and downgraded it to IE7. Problems solved.

Windows Secrets' Dennis O'Reilly also notes that . He quotes a letter from a tech-savvy reader:

"I have a computer repair business. In the last two weeks, I've had to fix three XP laptops after the installation of IE 8 made them inoperable. In each case, after the update, the desktop on each of these computers was blank except for the desktop wallpaper.

"It didn't matter whether you started the system in normal or safe mode, all desktop items -- including the taskbar -- were missing. The only way I could get them back was by using one of my bootable utilities that would allow me access to the restore points....

"Bottom line: There are big issues in Internet Explorer 8 land."