RSSFaster or more secure? Microsoft publishes IE patch to Automatic Updates
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 5, 2009, 10:40 AM
Given the choice between speed and security, Betanews readers this week have been siding with security, in a show of support that suggests that Windows Vista had the right idea after all. This morning, Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 users who have their Automatic Update notifications turned on manual will be making that choice, as Microsoft has published update 976749 -- released as a manual update on Monday -- to its Windows Update service, not as a "security update" or anything "critical" or even "important."
It's an "Update for Internet Explorer" whose purpose is to "resolve issues that may occur after installing the Internet Explorer cumulative security update issued as MS09-054" -- one of the major updates from the last Patch Tuesday round. The issue that update addressed is a very serious one, and Windows users who are concerned about their operating system possibly being vulnerable to a new class of attack, should apply that update and also apply the patch to that update, released this morning. Many users with Automatic Updates turned on full may wake up this morning with the update already having been applied.
Those folks may notice a difference, or they may not. There will be a performance cost, at least with respect to all versions of Internet Explorer since 5.01, but also to other features of Windows that rely on Internet Explorer. Betanews readers have suggested that this performance cost will be negligible, especially for those who do not time their browser with a stopwatch.
However, Betanews tests reveal the performance hit completely wipes out at least one category of speed increase that is the subject of recent Microsoft television advertising: a faster Web experience for those who prefer IE. Our tests show that, after update 976749 is applied, IE8 on Windows 7 is no faster than IE8 on Vista SP2 on the same machine.
Right now, the vulnerability exists more in concept than in practice. Although no known exploit appears to have been discovered yet, it's the architecture behind that vulnerability that makes it very serious at the outset. Conceivably, if and when an exploit appears and a patch is published to thwart it, malicious users could craft a variation of the exploit quite easily. The problem has to do with a fundamental programming technique that could be discontinued in the future, but which is pervasive throughout applications of all classes, from Microsoft and everyone else, and not just for Windows. Microsoft is treating the issue quite seriously, judging from the company's recent communications with us.
But the defense against this problem comes at an inopportune time for Microsoft, which is working to promote Windows 7 to consumers as better than its predecessor for being both more secure and faster. Of course, there are other Web browsers, perhaps all of which perform much faster and are arguably more secure. But Microsoft had been hoping to market IE8 as a solid contender, with some features like Web Slices and Accelerators that third-party alternatives have not yet matched. Microsoft may have to take a hit for publicly securing IE -- arguably the more responsible course of action -- at a time when Windows 7 is just coming out of the gate.
Bottom Line: we shouldn't have to choose between Security or Speed. Security just shouldn't have an impact on speed, or in a more real-world example, it should just keep it to a bare minimum. That's it.
Score: -2
|A difference of a few milliseconds seems fairly "minimum" to me. =)
Score: 0
|There's a simple fix for IE, switch rendering engines. Replace garbage Tri-dent with Apple's open source Webkit, you know the same engine that powers Google Chrome?
Overnight IE becomes a great browser and far more secure.
Score: -3
|Is there any way to make permanently IE use Webkit, i mean, unlike the Chrome Frame plug-in that depends on web devs modifying each site?
Score: -1
|"Apple's open source Webkit"
Yeah.. "Apple's"...
You're quite fond of claiming that everyone likes to copy Apple, especially Microsoft.
The truth is, Apple merely took someone else's work (KDE's KHTML and JavaScript engine, KJS), made changes to it, and claimed it as their own.
It seems Apple is quite adept at doing that.
Score: 0
|You mean that Apple took KHTML and fixed it. The KHTML people finally forked it (take that any way you like) and put WebKit to the side when they couldn't aggregate the changes that Apple made.
KHTML was very broken and buggy and Apple's developers helped a lot. Apple and Google are the main groups of developers on WebKit but several browsers use the engine including GNOME's Epiphany.
Score: 1
|I must say that I have never noticed any performance increase or decrease with Internet Explorer 8... pre- or post-patch(es).
The only thing that I have noticed is that Firefox seems to load most pages more quickly than every other browser I've used. Granted, I have not put each and every browser through exhaustive and rigorous testing on each and every site that I frequent... but if it's immediately apparent on the some of the few that I visited, that's good enough for me.
Perhaps... just perhaps... it has something to do with the possibility that all of the other browsers on my system are being forced to download and render content that Firefox with Adblock+ does not have to.
At the end of the day, Firefox is more useful to me, and that's what counts the most. Chrome may be faster at loading web apps. That would be a selling point for me.. if I actually used any.
Score: 0
|And in tomorrows news/commentary/viewpoint here on BN:
"Firefox 3.5.5 yields 410% speed boost over IE8, Windows 7 officially Vista-like while using IE8".
I'm kidding of course =)
Score: 4
|Is it me or reading about browser speed is getting redundant? An improvement of 0.1mms speed on a browser is not going to kill us or waste precious minutes of our lives. We're living in an age where most of the users are using broadband. We're not living in the age of 2400bps or 14.4k modem. Do you the writers at BN have a contest on who has the most comments on browser speed? I think I speak for most of the people, how about giving us some REAL news. I'm starting to read CNN technology news... least they post real news on technology.
Score: 5
|For HTML/JavaScript AJAX applications this is a big deal. It isn't so much a matter of how fast the web page downloads from the server, but how fast the JavaScript executes in the web page. This has a very direct and noticeable affect on how peppy the web site is. Its amazing today how many pauses in the web are just executing local JavaScript rather than doing server HTTP requests. Certainly MS doesn't care much since they push proprietary systems like Silverlight, but for people that care about truly portable open standards based rich client experiences, this is a big deal.
Score: 0
|Here's a idea. Since most people probably have broadband and any speed difference in these browsers is negligible at best. Why not talk about real issues. The writer must hate IE or microsoft in general to be not letting this issue die. I have road runner with turbo boost. Which means nothing loads slow, EVER. IE is more secure i guess, but again I just like it more. The interface and all the little things that make me wanna use it more then firefox. Opera is almost a clone of firefox interface wise. So I like that to. Chrome and Opera are a joke. I really hate useing them. I've tried to like something more then IE but I just don't.
So Scott why not move on to a subject we every day readers give a crap about. Like maybe the improvements to readyboost in windows 7 and chart the actual speed improvements there. If you havent heard the news maybe do some research and inform the rest of the site.
Score: 4
|Ahhhh... Folks.... If you consider that the "most discussed" topics on this site are related to the speed of IE8, Chrome, etc., then aren't we sort of doing this to ourselves??
They write it, we comment on it... They see it being "discussed", they then write about it again, we, again, comment on it, etc. and the cycle becomes self defeating.
Then again... I just did it too!!
Score: 2
|Welcome to the vicious circle...
Score: 3
|IE 8 slowing down... hmm... this is just getting boring. However, since news travel fast I expect to see more FireFox converts. Chrome is basically being pushed by YouTube.com so in next year or so, home users won't be looking at IE as their first-choice browser.
Score: 0
|-.-
Oh goodie! Another article based on an imperceptible speed difference only shown on benchmarks that are completely irrelevant to real-world usage...
...and we're going to make some half-assed correlations between them and Vista/Win7 using that meaningless benchmark to make yet another absurd commentary about "what the people want" regarding performance vs security as well.
Wonderful...
The benchmarks are one thing. I may believe they are utterly useless, but others may not which is fine. But using them to imply users are making some choice based on them is patently ridiculous. The differences are imperceptible, and while, as you and others suggest, they may add up over time, it is still 100% below the radar of damned near everyone, thus making this "Big decision" all but non-existent.
You're blowing this speed thing way out of proportion, Scott. No-one is making decisions based on things that cannot even perceive and since they are not seeing a speed difference, all they'll see is "security fix"...there is no choice to be made other than "I want security" or "I don't want security".
Score: 4
|If I'm blowing this out of proportion, then the people who are asking me, "Scott, is it just me or did my computer just get slower today?" are blowing along with me. It is not an imperceptible speed difference. And yes, folks are not making decisions based on the Betanews test. The Betanews test is validating what the folks noticing their slower systems, are seeing with their own eyes.
I know you say it's "half-assed," but believe me, I have enough a** invested in this to go beyond the "whole-assed" level.
-SF "Ass Index at 2.6 and Rising" 3
Score: -3
|""Scott, is it just me or did my computer just get slower today?" are blowing along with me. "
Bull. No-one is going to notice a few milliseconds difference. Chances are these people pay a little too much attention to you than is deserved or ask you this on a daily basis.
"It is not an imperceptible speed difference."
I disagree, as stated above. If the difference were even close to a second, I would reconsider. It ain't.
Score: 5
|I never noticed a thing, i know that much ;P
Score: 2
|lol what exactly is the point of this article, i'm lost... smells like, sad to say, whole lot a BS to me.
so, because Microsoft decides to push a browser updates or any updates to Windows 7, suddenly their services/products are deemed incompetent, thats what you're saying? looks like it
please for the love of the internets, smarten up
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Score: 4
|Heh, Do you Canadian's actually know what the 5th Nov is actually a celebration of?
Score: 0
|Wow. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Where in the world did you dig that up from?
Microsoft is being quite diligent about this, which is truly to its credit. I officially no longer care that the problem existed for years before now; Microsoft cares about it now, and that's what matters.
-SF3
Score: 0
|Yes, we Canadians, or least the ones on the far East coast, know the story full well ;P probably better than yourself Paul
Score: 1
|