Why no lines for the Motorola Xoom? Take 2

Readers had a lot to say about the Motorola Xoom, the Apple iPad, and their respective degrees of success in response to an April 2 post last titled "Why no one lines up for the Motorola Xoom."


Motorola Xoom.
(Credit: Motorola)

To repeat the premise. The success of Apple's iPad is ratcheting up the pressure on executive boards at PC and device makers. Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci was, by all appearances, pushed out because, among other reasons, he believed Acer wasn't responding quickly enough to the tablet phenomenon. A perspective at odds apparently with Acer's chairman, J.T. Wang. (And, yes, I stand corrected. Lanci left because he took a more aggressive stance on pursuing tablets, according to reports. Not the other way around.)

Is Wang or Lanci right? Is the tablet just an Apple success story that PC makers like Acer won't be able to duplicate? And is Motorola-Google rushing into tablets in a desperate attempt to keep pace with Apple?

Here's a sample of what readers had to say about the Xoom, the iPad, and the tablet in general:

A Google store: "Google needs to create a physical store, a physical Android Marketplace, where they can display the most prominent tablets, phones etc as these products wouldn't have to compete against PCs, Apple products etc. at local best buys. Not sure if Google is ready to do this, or if they're even interested in the idea, but who wouldn't walk into a Google store, if just to see what's going on?" (cabrillo24)

Too much choice = confusion? "Android has a small problem, that of being tooooo 'open source'...I've looked [at] 3-4 tablets and phones, they all say Android 2.2, but look and act different! What the blaze?!! Why can't they be like the recent windows7mobile? Same across different devices!" (hananias)

Xoom in need of apps: "I don't want a iPad since it is a 10 inch (roughly) iPhone with minimal upgrades for a premium price. Google's REAL problem is they don't take care of their own product. They let Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Logitech, Sony, IBM, Verizon and etc do the hardware/marketing for them...The Xoom could work if they get apps! I personally loved it and I will probably get one but it has NO APPS!" (LoboSolo21)

Apple out-markets Motorola but the Xoom is better: "I work for Verizon...Apple REQUIRES a wall or a section of the store literally to showcase their products (visit Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target)...[But] I gave up my iPad for a Motorola Xoom...Multi-Tasking: Sure apple introduced multi-tasking a few months ago on the iPad but it's still subpar at best. On the Xoom multi-tasking feels more natural and works flawlessly. You can launch the Camera, access the web and get driving directions while your music and YouTube video you where watching recently stay running." (Nuugame)

Don't forget the Nook: How many Nook Color tablets has Barnes & Noble sold? Over 3 million in a couple of months, and it's STILL touted mainly as an e-reader...No, you don't have to stand in line to get one, but those are still pretty good sales figures from a bookstore, and fairly close to what the ipad had when it first came onto the market." (Magicland).

Simple is best for most people: "I think the same things that turn on tech fanatics are the same things that turn off some of the general public. The general public really [want] products that not only are user friendly but work out of the box. I don't really think too many people, me included want to mess around with all the "open" geek-centric superior qualities of Android." (RP2011)

Lame marketing for Xoom at stores: "I was in Staples today and they had a Xoom on display. It was turned off. I tried all the buttons but could not find how to turn it on to try it. No salesperson around to show me how. Compare this to Apple Stores with 5 - 10 working display models and 5 - 6 salespeople hovering around to provide service. How can I be interested in a Xoom? Am I just supposed to trust that I'll love it, buy it and go home to see how/if it works?" (gregrochedc--2008)

Lest we forget, price: "The ONLY reason the Xoom failed is due to price. There are many other Andriod tablets coming out with a cheaper price tag and way more functionality. Asus is about to release one here in the US for $400 with Honeycomb installed. I am sure that one will fly off the shelves. I plan on buying one." (TX-Sunset).

Love my Xoom!: "LOVING my Xoom. I liked my I pad, but wow, the xoom is a breath of fresh air. Flash support, full hulu, amazon videos, my entire amazon music and movie library, sports websites like NHL.com actually work, I could go on and on." (vayapues)

Everyone just wants to be like Apple: "I am actually surprised at how many biased, not to forget absolutely ridiculous, comments there are on this subject. Apple is "king"....no, no Android is "king". I understand that one may be more loyal and follow a certain device, OS, or whatever it is. Here is the lowdown...plain, simple, and UNbiased. Everyone...and I mean EVERYONE (Android especially) wants to be like Apple. That's all it is!! The iPhone came out and started it all." (xredsand26)

Apple investigating Verizon iPad 2 3G issue

Apple says it's looking into an issue that requires some iPad 2 owners with built-in Verizon 3G to reboot their devices to re-enable 3G after turning it off.

In a statement by an Apple representative released to All Things Digital today, the company said it is aware that some iPad 2 owners with the Verizon 3G model are having connectivity issues and is investigating it. The number of those affected is "small," the company said.

Complaints began mounting on an Apple Support Discussions board in the days following the release of the iPad 2 with some users finding that the software switch to turn the 3G antenna on and off was not reactivating without first powering down the unit.

The Verizon version of the iPad 2 is the first iPad to ship with CDMA service. Verizon's 3G service is also offered on the CDMA version of the iPhone 4, which went on sale earlier this year. Both devices use the same software mechanism to turn the 3G modem on and off.

GE places solar bets on thin-film cells

General Electric, which has long made solar panels using traditional silicon, is converting to thin-film cells, using the same material as industry cost leader First Solar.

The company's research organization on Thursday detailed its activities with cadmium telluride solar cells, which the company has determined offers the most potential to lower solar power costs.

As first reported by CNET, GE's next-generation solar panels are based on technology from PrimeStar Solar, a Denver, Colo.-based company where GE is the majority owner. GE executives are bullish that by lowering costs, solar can grow rapidly, as its wind business has done.


GE thin-film solar cells are made from a combination of cadmium telluride, the same material used by industry cost leader First Solar.
(Credit: GE)

GE has not yet begun manufacturing solar panels using the thin-film technology but it plans to do so some time in 2011, according to a company representative.

There are several companies developing thin-film solar cell technology, which promise to lower the cost of manufacturing and use less material. But thin-film solar cells are less efficient at producing electricity than crystalline silicon cells.

GE chose to go with cadmium telluride because it offers the most potential for overall cost savings, said Danielle Merfeld, the solar-technology platform leader at GE's Research facility in Niskayuna, N.Y.

"We think cad tel fundamentally has better cost structure than other thin-film technologies," she said. "The combination of efficiency that we think we can get to, the yield of the manufacturing line, the cost of manufacturing, and the cost of raw materials--the combination gives us the best outcome for making electricity."

Over the past three years, a number of companies have invested in making thin-film solar cells from a combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide (CIGS). But CIGS is a tricky material to work with because manufacturers need to control four materials, noted Merfeld. Cadmium and tellurium are byproducts of existing mining processes, such as copper mining.

In terms of efficiency, Merfeld said GE projects it can come to market with a solar panel that is more efficient than what First Solar already offers, which is about 11 percent.

GE expects to target the utility market with its panels, but there is potential for commercial and residential customers as well. Because thin-film panels are less efficient, they are typically used in places where space is not a major constraint.

GE no longer produces panels made from crystalline silicon and plans to enter solar with high-volume manufacturing. "We decided not to step into manufacturing in 2009 as many other companies did because we wanted to make sure to have a competitive advantage from the technology," Merfeld said.

Asked about the toxicity of cadmium, Merfeld said that the material is stable once it is bound with tellurium. But GE does plan to have a recycling program for its panels, as other solar manufacturers do, she said.

Report: U.S. solar $6 billion industry in 2010

The U.S. solar market grew 67 percent from a $3.6 billion market in 2009 to $6 billion in 2010, according to "U.S. Solar Market Insight: 2010 Year in Review," a report released this month by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and GTM Research.

California installed the most photovoltaics last year, with 258.9 megawatts of direct current (MWdc), followed by New Jersey in second place with 137.1, and Nevada with 61.4. Others on the Top 10 list in order of greatest installations included Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas.

The SEIA estimates that the U.S. now has a cumulative solar capacity of 2.6 gigawatts. Of that 2.6 gigawatts, there are 152,516 PV systems totaling 2.1 gigawatts (direct current) connected to the power grid. The U.S. also now has 17 concentrated solar plants totaling about 507 megawatts (alternating current), according to the SEIA.

The biggest reason for this growth could be attributed to the large amount of utility installations. There were a total of 113 megawatts as of 2009, and that increased to 242 megawatts by the end of 2010. The SEIA attributes a lot of those projects to the Department of Energy Loan program and says future growth outlook will depend in part on that program's fate.

Still, despite growth, the U.S. actually fell behind other countries in 2010 in terms of global photovoltaic installation. The U.S. was home to only 5 percent of the world's installed photovoltaics in 2010, compared with 6.5 percent in 2009. The SEIA attributed this to the European solar boom caused by government incentives that pushed countries like Spain, Italy, and Germany to install more solar plants.

Solar CIGS reach 15.7 percent efficiency

The Department of Energy has confirmed that MiaSole's thin-film photovoltaic solar modules have reached an efficiency of 15.7 percent, the company announced today.

That is an efficiency improvement of more than 1 percent since last year when the company was given a 14.3 percent efficiency rating from the DOE's 's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, according to MiaSole.

Solar panel efficiency ratings signify how much power one gets out of a solar panel per square inch, something obviously of great interest to companies and consumers evaluating which solar panels to purchase for projects.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based MiaSole makes flexible copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin-film photovoltaic panels with integrated electronics--an alternative to traditional solar panels made from polycrystalline silicon.

CIGS solar panels have traditionally been less efficient at converting solar rays into electricity than silicon solar panels, but can be built on flexible forms making them less expensive to manufacture and offering more choices as to how they can be integrated with a building.

"An almost 1.5 percent absolute increase in efficiency in such a short time on a continuous roll-to-roll manufacturing line is impressive and demonstrates good process control and a validation of the MiaSole approach," Rommel Noufi, a solar researcher at NREL, said in MiaSole's press release.

Noufi pointed out that the rating brings the company closer to achieving the DOE's goal of "$1 per watt."

Many corporate consumers and utilities, while they do look at efficiency rating, evaluate solar modules based on their total cost per watt, including installation costs, and exactly how many kilowatt-hours a given system can produce annually. The DOE announced in August that for solar panels to be competitive without government subsidies against traditional electricity, solar panels will likely have to cost $1 per watt to install and acheive greater efficiency.

It's estimated the solar industry will get to $2 per watt within the next five years, though currently large-scale solar systems still cost between $3 and $4 per watt, according to the DOE's August assessment (PDF).

This new upgrade in efficiency certainly helps MiaSole's crusade to compete with traditional silicon solar cells. And it comes at a time when many CIGS companies are struggling to compete against silicon, which has become significantly cheaper and more efficient than it once was, according to analysts like Lux Research.

Silicon panels on the market generally have efficiency ratings of at least 15 percent efficiency or better. SunPower, for example, announced in May its SunPower E19 Series silicon solar panels have an efficiency of 19 percent. Others have claimed that they're testing solar panels in laboratories with efficiencies as high as 41 percent.

MiaSole already got one boost this year from Wal-Mart. The retail giant announced in September it would use First Solar and MiaSole solar panels as it continues its program to add solar panels to Wal-Mart store roofs in sunny places like Arizona, California, and Hawaii.

GE to build massive thin-film U.S. solar plant

GE plans to manufacture 400 megawatts worth annually of thin-film solar cells made with cadmium telluride.
(Credit: GE)

General Electric plans to build a thin-film solar factory in the U.S. that will produce solar cells that have an efficiency of 12.8 percent, the company announced today.

In conjunction with this news, GE also announced that it has acquired PrimeStar Solar, a company GE has had a stake in since 2008.

The thin-film solar cells to be manufactured using cadmium telluride were developed by PrimeStar through a cooperative research program with Department of Energy's National Center for Photovoltaics. The cells were given a 12.8 percent efficiency rating, through a verification process conducted by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

Even though others have achieved higher efficiencies in the lab, that 12.8 percent efficiency rating is significant in the world of thin-film solar technology manufacturing. Cells made from silicon can convert sunlight to electricity with a 15 percent to 20 percent efficiency, but are much more expensive to manufacture and considered a completely different class of solar cell. Thin-film solar cells made with copper, indium, gallium, and selenide (CIGS) have reached 15.7 percent efficiency in the lab.

A better comparison would be with First Solar, the company that will be GE's leading competitor. First Solar has been producing thin-film solar cells using cadmium telluride for years, and has said those manufactured cells have an 11.2 percent efficiency

"Milestones like these are pivotal as the United States looks to drive widespread adoption of solar technologies," Ryne Raffaelle, director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at NREL, said in a statement.

GE said that its new plant, when complete, will be able to produce 400 megawatts worth of thin-film solar cells per year and employ 400 people. That would make it one of the largest thin-film solar manufacturing presences in the U.S.

The company didn't give specifics on where the facility will be sited, or when it will go into operation. GE said it plans to announce the location shortly, from among a number of locations being considered.

First Solar announced in March that it's building a 250-megawatt plant in Arizona to complement its existing Ohio plant, which will bring its total U.S. manufacturing capacity to 500 megawatts annually by 2012.

A few companies, including GE and Abound Solar, have bet on cadmium telluride rather than CIGS. That could be because it is easier to source those two materials instead of the four that go into CIGS. Cadmium and tellurium are often byproducts of mining operations.

The U.S. solar market grew 67 percent between 2009 and 2010 and is now a $6 billion market, according to a recent report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and GTM Research. The report saw growth potential in the space as more and more utilities seek to build installations for themselves, or source solar electricity for their portfolio.

Worldwide demand for solar is also expected to grow to a $113.6 billion industry by 2020, according to a recent report from Clean Edge.


GE has long said that it wants to be a major player in the space, announcing in 2009 that it would have a thin-film manufacturing plant in the U.S. by 2011.

Studying a second life for electric-vehicle batteries

When a lithium ion battery reaches the point at which it can no longer be used in an electric car, it still has the potential to be used in other applications. But exactly what are the best uses for them?

The U.S. government is backing a comprehensive study to determine just that, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced Tuesday.

"To date, no one has comprehensively studied the feasibility, durability, and value of Li-ion batteries for second-use applications," NREL said in a statement.

The California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) will lead the research project which will explore the best applications for used lithium ion batteries. Potential uses include employing used batteries as energy storage devices for variable electricity sources like wind and solar that could also tie in to the electric grid.

"The NREL award to the CCSE team leverages an ongoing UC Davis-CCSE-TSRC study funded by the California Energy Commission on the repurposing of used EV batteries for home energy storage. The total budget for the NREL-CCSE second use battery project is approximately $1.3 million with 51 percent of the funding coming from CCSE and its partners," according to NREL.

The group will also examine how lithium ion batteries might be better designed or manufactured to maximize their potential for second-life uses.

NREL's project is not just a technical study. Like many Department of Energy projects in recent years, a comprehensive study on the economic consequences will be conducted in tandem with the application research.

The team plans to investigate how a second-use system might be used to temper the expensive cost of electric cars and electric-car batteries in the U.S.

It might be economically viable, for example, to have a system where people or companies can give electric-car batteries over for second use, and obtain a refund or credit for the battery's remaining value. Such a system might lower the overall cost of a lithium ion car batteries for manufacturers and consumers.

In addition to researching all the possible uses for lithium ion batteries, the study will also include comprehensive testing to determine battery lifespan, as well as developing a standard for testing and determining battery life.

'Solar fuel' research mimics photosynthesis

NEW HAVEN, Conn.--In an ambitious attempt to replicate nature, various researchers are seeking to create fuels from water and sunlight, much the way plants do.

California Institute of Technology professor Nate Lewis on Saturday gave a snapshot of the "swing for the fences" research his lab is pursuing to make fuels directly from water and sunlight. Caltech last year was picked as the lead for a newly created Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) to run the Department of Energy's Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub.

Researchers at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosythesis are designing arrays of microwires coated with catalysts that can split water to make hydrogen or liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
(Credit: CalTech)

The center is one of many so-called solar fuels efforts that seek to bypass the traditional biofuel method of growing plants and then convert biomass to a transportable, liquid fuel. Other researchers and companies are seeking to genetically engineer microbes that secrete fuels or develop cheaper methods for splitting water to make hydrogen fuel.

During a talk at the Yale Climate & Energy Institute's annual conference, Lewis described the concepts driving his research and what form a solar fuel generator could take.

The sun is the largest source of energy, but storing solar energy with conventional means, such as batteries, is very expensive, he said. The notion behind his research is to store solar energy in the chemical bonds of fuels. Light-duty transportation will move toward electric vehicles because they are more efficient than internal combustion engines, but there is still a need for liquid fuels in other forms of transportation or to generate power when there is no sun.

"It's inevitable that we will find a way to efficiently take the biggest energy source we have in the sun and store it in chemical fuels, thereby obviating the storage problem, thereby having a drop-in replacement fuel, and thereby solving the (fuel) infrastructure problem," he said. "We are going to do this. The question is how fast and how soon."

The center's solar fuel generator is designed around tiny wires of silicon placed in a solution. Traditional solar cells also use silicon, which releases a flow of electrons, or electricity, when hit by light. But the work at Lewis' lab diverges from the solar cell form and function in significant ways.

Using nanotechnology, the design calls for rods of silicon "microwires," which allows the material to absorb more light. Rather than only create electricity, these fibers are treated with a catalyst to use the sun's energy for fuel production. A catalyst can react with water to produce hydrogen gas, which can be used as a fuel. A longer-term goal is to discover catalysts that use carbon dioxide from the air in the production of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel such as methanol.

The design intentionally copies the process of photosynthesis, where leaves split water and use carbon dioxide from the air to make sugars. But researchers like Lewis are seeking to greatly increase the efficiency of converting sunlight to stored energy. Plants spend much of the sun's energy on growing.

Lewis said that arrays of these microfibers could be placed on a flexible polymer so that they would resemble a "solar carpet" where the fibers are like tiny trees in a forest. How an entire fuel-producing system would be designed and what fuel is more economical to produce is still not clear, he said.

"We don't actually know whether or not it's cheaper to wick out gas at low pressure or to wick out liquid (fuel). It depends on how we plumb it and the only way to find out is to build a few and cost them," he said.

Research in artificial photosynthesis has been going on for decades. One of the biggest technical challenges is finding materials that are robust enough to sit in the sun for several years, yet are cheap and efficient at converting sunlight to electrical energy, he said. The goal is to be robust, cheap, and efficient, but scientists now can get only two of the three.

The Fuels from Sunlight research is a long-term effort, but Lewis said a prototype solar carpet could be ready in two years and he is confident that the efficiency can ultimately be as good at many of today's solar panels in converting sunlight to usable energy.

Artificial leaf
Outside the Fuels from Sunlight lab are many other research and commercial programs, which could also be called solar fuels.

Notably, there are a number of biotech-oriented efforts to use genetically manipulated microorganisms such as bacteria to make fuels directly from sunlight and water. Joule Unlimited, for example, is a start-up that is designing a bioreactor in the shape of a flat plastic pane that grows cyanobacteria from water, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. The cyanobacteria are genetically engineered to make diesel fuel directly.


A picture of the tiny silicon wires that would be put in water to create hydrogen from sunlight.
(Credit: Caltech)

Another high-profile researcher in artificial photosynthesis is Daniel Nocera from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-founded a company called Sun Catalytix that is using a relatively inexpensive catalyst to split water to make hydrogen and oxygen. The company plans to make a system that can make the hydrogen, store it, and then run it through a fuel cell to make electricity or burn it for heat and power. It envisions the technology would first be suited for distributed energy systems in developing countries.

Two weeks ago at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Nocera presented results from an effort to make an "artificial leaf." Sun Catalytix has already made a prototype system where a photovoltaic solar cell, coated with a catalyst and placed in water, can make hydrogen and oxygen.

Microsoft is back in the browser game

After a three-week IE9 immersion, I've concluded that Microsoft once again has a competitive Web browser.

And even though Internet Explorer remains the most-used browser on the Net today, convincing me that Internet Explorer 9 is a real browser was quite an accomplishment. Here's why.

IE6, now a decade old, is loathed by Web developers the world over for its lack of standards support, and it's the focus of a Microsoft effort that's trying to get the companies and people using the browser to modernize. After a five-year hiatus, IE7 emerged with some handy features, such as tabbed browsing and a search box, but it was mostly about trying to catch up with rivals such as Firefox and Opera that hadn't idled away the years.

IE8 took the major step of trying to conform to Web standards, using a "compatibility view" mode only as a fallback to show sites that had been crafted for earlier versions of IE. But it still lagged other browsers in the breadth of standards it supported, and it crawls when executing the ever-more-important Web-based JavaScript programs.

Even though IE is built into Windows, the most widely used personal computer operating system on the planet, its share of usage steadily diminished as people realized there was a better answer. Microsoft had competed fiercely with Netscape in the 1990s and won, but then it sat back and left the innovation to others.

Thus, the world of Web developers and technical enthusiasts can be forgiven for being skeptical about IE9.

But as I see it, Microsoft has fully awoken here. No doubt the influence of Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome helped ring the alarm bells and shake loose funding for programmers and marketing, but Microsoft's grasp of the importance of the Web is much more than a knee-jerk reflex to catch up to rivals.

My life with IE9
The browser itself worked well for me, for the most part. My top pick is still Chrome, with Firefox 4 a close second, but IE9 got the job done.

After an initial week of kicking the tires, I took the plunge and set it as default browser. I spend most of my working day, and a lot of my off hours, in a browser, so that's actually a big step. Slow browsers drive me nuts.

I compiled a list of 38 complaints as I was testing IE9. That may sound like a lot, but many are petty ones such as occasionally blank full-screen YouTube videos or wonky page rendering on Picplz and Apple's online store. The proof that IE9 had passed the test was that after I had set it as default browser, I rarely cringed as I contemplated the prospect of clicking a link, the way I had with IE8.

My biggest problem using IE9 was that it chained me to a deskbound quad-core Dell Windows PC (it's a laptop, but five cables tether it down). I missed the lumbar-preserving stand-up arrangement I use for my other main machine, a MacBook Pro. In other words, it was an issue that had nothing to do with the browser itself.



Neither IE9's list of tabs across the top of the browser window nor the list that appears when hovering over the taskbar icon are very useful for navigating large numbers of tabs. In fairness, it's a problem all browsers have.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

I did have some complaints I think are worth mentioning. Chief among them:

• Tab management--I often have dozens open--was no better than with most browsers today, and often worse. The integration with the taskbar probably helps people who use mice to navigate a smaller number of tabs, but I use keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-tab), and a long list of text wasn't much better than a long list of tabs. I'm glad Microsoft added the option to add a new row of tabs below the combined search/address bar, but I wish there was a way to activate that option only when tabs in the ordinary configuration get too narrow. IE groups tabs by color, but I find this organizational scheme marginally useful sometimes and a hidrance at other times, so I shut it off. When I hold down ctrl-tab to zing past a large number of tabs, many intermediate tabs don't get highlighted in the tab strip, requiring me to guess how far I've gone and when to stop. Finally, IE9 often didn't pick up a site's favicon correctly, and I find those tiny graphics very useful for quickly locating the tab I want.

• Google Docs is hobbled. I spend a lot of time with Google's online word procesor and spreadsheet, and both suffered performance lags, despite the speed boost of IE9's Chakra engine for running JavaScript. The word processor was fine until documents got moderately long--one or two thousand words--then it started dragging. The spreadsheet seemed to have trouble even earlier. Perhaps Google bears some of the responsibility here, but Firefox, Safari, and Chrome don't suffer from this same drawback. I also had a temporary showstopper: when my display was zoomed to 125 percent and the Google Docs page was shrunk, the cursor would be misplaced. Changing the zoom settings back to 100 percent all around fixed it.

• IE9 just didn't have quite as light a feel as Chrome or Firefox. When there's that little bit of lag when you repeat the same action over and over--Ctrl-T to spawn a new tab or Ctrl-L to start typing a search term or Web address--it just wears you down. For all the vaunted hardware acceleration in IE9, its user interface response was just a bit poky.

• Is it the browser or the OS? Antitrust settlement notwithstanding, IE9 still feels enmeshed with Windows. This time the installation didn't require a reboot, an improvement over IE8 and over Safari upgrades on Mac OS X, but the trade-off is that for installation, you must first quit any application that gets within a mile of HTML rendering. For me that was Photoshop, Avast antivirus, Firefox, Chrome, Google Talk Plugin, HP Digital Imaging Monitor, Java SE binary, Java Update Scheduler, Skype, Synaptics Touchpad Enhancements, Tweetdeck, Windows Desktop Gadgets, Windows Explorer, Windows Host Process (Rundll32), Windows Live Mesh, Yahoo Messenger. To its credit, the installer restarted my antivirus software afterward. I also still dislike seeing "Internet options" and "Windows Update" in IE9 menus. These are operating system actions, but Microsoft probably is leery of removing them after so many people have learned to find them in IE.

But overall, IE9 was a capable, competent browser. Its gradual arrival will liberate Web developers hobbled by old browsers--especially as Windows 7 finally replaces Windows XP at corporations wedded to IE6.

The ever-expanding Web

Today's Web is a vastly more powerful platform for software than a decade ago. Graphical elements and formatting are richer and more dynamic with modern Cascading Style Sheets technology, and JavaScript has come into its own with higher performance in browsers and libraries such as jQuery that make it easier to use. HTML5's vaunted video tag and the coming WebSocket specification can make pages even more active, while storage technologies can let Web applications work even when there's no network connection.

It's a world where Google Docs can be a viable replacement for Microsoft Office for some fraction of the

The W3C's new HTML5 logo

market, and where programmers can contemplate massively multiplayer online games built from Web standards.

With IE9, Microsoft has embraced this vision, even though it undermines two other important programming foundations from Microsoft, the company's Windows operating system and its Silverlight technology that serves both as a browser plug-in and as Windows Phone 7's native application technology.

That internal competition must have made for some heated meetings, but really, Microsoft had little choice. Powerful rivals were moving together down the Web-app path, and developers were following. It's a classic cannibalization story: sometimes a company is better off embracing a popular technology that hurts its own products, because the alternative is letting competitors inflict the pain.

Thus, at the same time it was building IE9, Microsoft re-engaged with Web standards work with HTML, CSS, Scalable Vector Graphics, typography, and more. Many of these standards are present in IE9, one indicator that Microsoft isn't faking its support for the new Web merely with marketing bafflegab.

Microsoft also embraced many healthy practices developing IE9. Publicly released platform preview editions let Web developers test the browser as it evolved, and Microsoft responded to feedback.

To be sure, IE9 still lacks support for a number of Web standards. But I'd rather see an IE9 in its present state and released than an IE9 supporting all those standards but arriving sometime at the end of 2011. I don't expect Microsoft to adopt Google's six-week update cycle, but I do think successors to IE9 are under active development, and I see no reason why animated (and hardware-accelerated) CSS transitions and transformations aren't on the to-do list.

WebGL--the hardware-accelerated 3D graphics interface all the other browser makers have embraced--is a big question mark for IE. Microsoft has a competing interface in Silverlight 5, which goes into beta testing this week, not to mention native Windows apps using DirectX. But judging by IE9, it's not unthinkable that Microsoft would support it somehow, if enough developers used it on the Web.

After all, Microsoft clearly has decided it's time for an IE it can be proud of.