So how does IE8 match up?

I think it's still to slow. After using Opera for a few years, starting to use IE8 is still as intolerable as switching from DSL to dialup.

I was hoping that there would be an easy way to remove the IE7 pro addon that had been carried across from when IE7 was installed, but looks like I'll still need to use P&F in Vista. This isn't so bad though, when you consider that Firefox is really the only browser that does this better, and though the plugin information Opera 9 provides is comprehensive, it's probably even more difficult to find and do anything with.

The one thing that I do like are the accelerators. These seem a lot easier to access with the accelerators button, and I like the fact that the right-click menu has icons. Opera has had search, dictionary, translation and encyclopedia tools under the right-click menu for some time now, and it's implelentation of a translator is probably much more useful in that you can select an option for which languages to translate between. The accelerator for Google Translate in IE is limited to translating things to your language. Though this is the most common use for most people, it's still nice to be able to translate from English for language students like me. The disadvantage of using the translator in Opera's right-click menu is that you need to use Yahoo to translate (there may be a complex way by changing configuration files that lets you use the preferred Google, but that would be an unacceptable workaround when you consider the average user).

As for the search bar, the integrated search suggestions for Google are nice. I was hoping it would return the first few results of the search in the same way that the Wikipedia search provider does. To be fair, though, Live Search only gives suggestions as well.

I consider IE8 to be a good effort, but it doesn't seem to be anything unique, and it's still nowhere near as those competitors that aren't Safari and Firefox 3.