Experience with Internet Explorer 9 on T60’s w/X1300 GPU?

[Johan]

I recently installed Windows 7 (Home Premium) on a T60 model/type 2007-55U which has a T2400 Core Duo (1.83 GHz) CPU and a (discrete) 64 MB ATI Radeon X1300 GPU (I should add, that the harddisk in this T60 had been upgraded to an Intel X25-M solid-state drive, which is very fast). The Windows 7 install went smooth and included Microsoft Internet Explorer ver. 8, which I found to be very snappy. After the install, I ran the Microsoft Update a number of times - to install newest patches, Win 7 Service Pack 1 etc. etc. Among the suggested updates was Microsoft Internet Explorer ver. 9, which I also chose to install (this install also went smooth as well). After re-booting I however to my regret discovered that Internet Explorer ver. 9 ran very slow on this X1300 GPU; as far as I recall it reported something like the graphics card being ”too old” (or unsupported?), and that IE 9 was therefore using use software rendering (or emulation?) instead of using the much faster GPU rendering (more information about this issue in e.g. IE9 performs slower than IE8 and IE7 on older PCs - WinMatrix or Force Enable GPU Hardware Acceleration Graphics Rendering on Old GPU in IE9). I therefore uninstalled IE ver. 9 and reverted to IE ver. 8.

Note: I did not play with e.g. manually forcing IE ver. 9 to use GPU hardware acceleration as described in e.g. How to Allow GPU Acceleration in Internet Explorer 9.

The purpose of this post is to ask if anyone has any practical experience with successfully running Internet Explorer ver. 9 (fast!) on a T60 with the X1300 GPU? I would prefer comments from users having actual experience rather than speculations and assumptions and beliefs etc. etc. What I wish to find out is if there is perhaps some way to make (tweak?) IE 9 to run as fast as IE 8 on the X1300-T60?

Thanks in advance!

Johan

[Colonel O'Neill]

Did you try slapping on the 10.2 ATI Legacy Catalyst for the X1300?

[Johan]

I am bringing up this issue again since I guess that I cannot be alone with this issue here in the "T60-community"... If anybody has managed to get Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 to run acceptable on a T60 with either the ATI X1300 or the X1400 GPU, please share your experience about how to avoid the T60 being very sluggish with IE9?

Did you try slapping on the 10.2 ATI Legacy Catalyst for the X1300?

No, I didn't try that, and I have no reason(s) to believe that this should improve the situation. If you however DO have any well-justified reason to believe otherwise, please be kind to share. In the latter case, a direct link to the "10.2 ATI Legacy Catalyst" (usable in X1300/X1400 T60's) would be very much appreciated - thank you in advance.

According to the thread Internet Explorer 9 Beta - Slow performance on Thinkpad T60 when running on battery a user report IE9 to be "great" when on mains (everything is relative - "great" compared to what?), but sluggish when on battery. The issue did not seem to be resolved. The same issue was reported in ATI X1400 in T60 too old for IE9 hardware rendering? and in the thread T60p with Windows 7, IE9 and GPU accelerated browsing.

Are anybody able to draw a definite conclusion about IE9 in the X1300/X1400 generation T60's - like "stay away and stick to IE8" or have I missed something?

Thanks in advance for any qualified feedback!

Johan

[hhmcsv]

I'm running IE9 on mine, seems about same speed as the Firefox (ver 7.01) I use as standard. Not slow at all. X1300 graphics.

[TTY]

IE9 is slow because of a security feature. When you enter a site address and press enter, IE9 doesn't load that web page immediately. Instead, it sends a message to Microsoft and asks whether the web page is safe. Microsoft looks it up in a database and then sends an answer. If Microsoft considers the web page to be safe, IE9 will load it. All this takes a substantial amount of time and makes IE9 seem sluggish.

[dr_st]

Surely the aforementioned security feature can be disabled.

(I still use Firefox, though, and IE only as a backup).

[Johan]

@ hhmcsv and TTY:

Thanks both for your feedback - interesting (although I could have desired a bit more information from hhmcsv about your exact T60 configuration, incl. what Direct-X version you have installed? If you wish, you may e.g. use the free and very fine tool System Information for Windows to check this - see under the SW --> "Applications" section).

Surely the aforementioned security feature can be disabled.

Would you perhaps be kind to explain in detail HOW this can be done, under Windows 7 and under XP?? Also, do you know from own experience if disabling this check will result in that IE9 is running noticeably faster on a X1300 T60 under Win7? Thanks in advance for further feedback!

PS: Highly annoying that I am still (and now for years!) not receiving any e-mail notifications when users post replies on threads on this forum - like what is discussed in the thread Are you (not) having problems with email notifications?

Johan

[GACrabill]

Surely the aforementioned security feature can be disabled.

Would you perhaps be kind to explain in detail HOW this can be done, under Windows 7 and under XP?? Also, do you know from own experience if disabling this check will result in that IE9 is running noticeably faster on a X1300 T60 under Win7?

XP and Win7 :
Method #1 : start IE8 or IE9, select "Safety" from the Command Bar, under "SmartScreenFilter" choose "turn off SmartScreenFilter"
Method #2 : Start --> Control Panel --> Internet Options --> Advanced tab --> scroll down to Security --> uncheck SmartScreenFilter

I do not know the performance impacts of turning off SmartScreenFilter since I always run with it "ON".

[hhmcsv]

......and I am always running with it off and as mentioned do not experience any slow behaviour.

[violen]

mine is 2007whc, exately the same spec as you.
normally IE9 runs fine on win7 ultimate. However whenever I download things, it takes ages to run the security scan. the larger the file, the longer it takes. i counted with a timer, it takes 50 sec to scan a 40MB program.

if i recall correctly, IE9 runs fine on XP, nothing unusual. dont have xp installed on this machine anymore so i cant test it out atm.

[Johan]

@ violen: Welcome to the forum!

Thanks for reporting your experience - very interesting (and thanks as well to the other posters, hhmcsv, TTY, dd_st and GACrabill) for sharing, all much appreciated. The T60 on which I experienced this problem (the 2007-55U mentioned in my first post) was set up for my sister, so therefore I don't have it at hand right now, but in the not-so-distant future I plan to set up an identical T60 (for myself) with Windows 7, and when I get to that, I will for sure visit this thread again to optimize myself!

Johan

[GACrabill]

... if i recall correctly, IE9 runs fine on XP, nothing unusual.

IE9 only runs on Vista and Windows 7.
IE8 was the last version of IE to run on XP.

[violen]

hmmm, perhaps that's why i didnt notice anything unusual with IE when I was on XP. lol, we are talking about two different programs.

can anyone with t60 and windows 7 do a test download see how long it takes to complete the automatic security scan done by IE9. the 40MB program I used for testing was Access Connections from Lenovo. http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-61432 . it drove me nuts when it took me more than a hour to install Rescue and Recovery (300+MB, English language only) due to the enlongated automatic security scan.
I am questioning myself whether install windows 7 on T60 is the right move, maybe I should install Vista instead.

[RealBlackStuff]

Rethink your download strategy (and choice of browser).
There are addons available for both Firefox and IE, that will speed up D/L quite a lot.
I'm sure the likes of Chrome, Safari et al offer similar.
I don't have IE9 and I only use IE(8) when I'm updating Windows.
Otherwise I use Firefox 8 with the DownThemAll addon for downloading.
My AV is the free Avast.

[violen]

I like to have as few programs installed as possible. if i can view pages and download with IE, wich comes with windows, then I dont see the point for installing another thrid party progrom which does the samething.
I used to use Avast!, then i switched to MSE because its small, less ram usage, and does the its work just fine.
thanks for the advice though.

[dr_st]

I like to have as few programs installed as possible. if i can view pages and download with IE, wich comes with windows, then I dont see the point for installing another thrid party progrom which does the samething.

I wasn't happy with IE's performance and features, so I moved to Firefox. Other people moved to Chrome...

I used to use Avast!, then i switched to MSE because its small, less ram usage, and does the its work just fine.

I tried MSE on one of my laptops, but quickly did away with it. It did its work just fine, but I wasn't happy that every once in a while (especially when the computer has been off for a while and came out of hibernation), it started hogging the CPU for extensive periods of time, running its auto-updates and what not. It was particularly annoying whenever I actually used the computer on a battery, since it would drain it much faster.