IE7 – Leaked and Loaded

Although Internet Explorer was only due to be unveiled during the first quarter of 2006, a build of the new browser and several screenshots has leaked online.

The link to the code of the IE7 build (version 5299) was posted on the Windows tech forum JCXP.net on Friday. I managed to get myself a copy of it before it was removed and was sorely tempted to give it a test. Although Microsoft took down the link, techies around the world managed to get their hands on the build, which can be downloaded as an 11MB file in .rar format.

Furthermore the patch which allows the IE7 build to run with cracked copies of Windows had been downloaded over 12 000 times by yesterday morning. So there’s either only 12,000 cracked copies of Windows in the world, or 12,000 people that are interested in running a copy of Internet Explorer 7.

Has anybody else landed a copy of IE7… or is anyone even interested at this point? Given that it doesn’t have the open source backing of the Firefox community, and is likely to consume your CPU usage with 18 dozen instances of IEXPLORE running for every new tab you open up, will IE7 geniuinely be worth the wait? If I was taking an eye to this whole “leak”, which I am, I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft leaked the build themselves to see how many people would take it up and talk it up. Makes perfect sense seen as there was the whole “leaked documents” story late last year.

8 Comments

  1. Rob Comber January 24, 2006 at 9:10 pm

    I can’t imagine that there will be a big surge of people to run this when it comes out officially either. The figures seem about right for people who’d want to run it. Wouldn’t mind seeing or hearing what IE7 is like but honestly only if it comes and hits me in the face itself, not gonna go looking!

  2. Ken January 24, 2006 at 9:18 pm

    True point, the link landed in my lap amongst reading articles but to be honest, I’m not at all interested in it myself. With the constant development of Firefox, its hard to see how Microsoft would match its timeline in terms of releases or improvements either graphically or in the code.

    Think you have it right when the figures speak for themselves if my own web stats are any way accurate.

  3. Robin Blandford January 24, 2006 at 11:11 pm

    There has been a beta freely available on microsoft.com for a few months now. You can dl it and test your applications on it no problem.

  4. Ken January 24, 2006 at 11:22 pm

    Nice to wait until the beta stage is drawing to a close, at least in terms of browser development since I’m no software developer. If it has been around this long, was it restricted to certain parties given all the hype over the “leak”

  5. ell January 25, 2006 at 8:20 pm

    Because 12,000 people downloaded the patch that means one of only two things to you? Either thats every pirated Windows user or everyone interested in IE7? Are you that stupid?

  6. Ken January 25, 2006 at 10:38 pm

    Oh come on, there’s a sense of humour behind all that if you look at it…

    I was simply having a crack at Internet Explorer, not resorting to namecalling… which by the way, if you’re at least going to call me stupid, do so with a proper email or web address?

  7. John January 26, 2006 at 9:32 am

    Don’t ya just hate when people blurt out the first bit of nonsense that comes into their heads and then don’t have the balls to to back it up and leave some contact details.

    ell- There’s no harm in having an opinion but at least be prepared to discuss it.

    If 12000 people downloaded the genuine advantage crack in order to run IE7 then it’s obvious they’re on pirate copies of Windows XP. And then it wouldnt be too much to assume that those people had some interest in IE7, either that or some kind of morbid curiosity to see what kind of donkey M$ are gonna push as a browser next.

  8. Ken January 26, 2006 at 9:56 am

    Good whiff of controversy off this one. Its just that people who leave fake emails and websites get on my nerve.

    They wouldn’t need a crack to run Firefox, or Tablane, or any other browser!

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