One Week With Microsoft Edge: I Wanted To Shoot Myself
It’s slow, buggy and unusable.
For the last week or so, I’ve been using Microsoft Edge as my daily driver just to see how exactly does it compare against Vivaldi, Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera, and yes, I do have all browsers installed on my machine and use them every single day.
At first I was super excited but as the minutes went by, soon I realized that Edge is pretty much a Beta product with more holes than Swiss cheese.
Sometimes I felt like using IE9. Why? Well, for example: top sites would always take some time to load (which was one of the major issues with the old version of Internet Explorer) when opening a new tab, occasionally they won’t even load at all. Now imagine seeing this laggy behavior every single time you open a new tab. Yes, Edge might be faster on paper with SunSpider and other synthetic benchmarks but when it comes to the real world scenarios, you do end up wasting more time than on a “slower” web browser.
Using Microsoft Edge is like playing a lottery, you never know whether the New Tab page will load or not
Then just for the sake of your average consumer experience, I’ve installed Windows 10 on a HP255 notebook and asked my girlfriend to use it for a day or two. The result? After loading the first page (which had Flash content), she complained that the video is not working, instead, the screen looked like this (and yes, it was only on Microsoft Edge):
Watching videos on Microsoft Edge
And don’t get me started on some ridiculous decisions like having fading in / out address bars that have one purpose only: to annoy you, inability to “Save target as”, no ability to manage Top Sites and more.
Where is the address bar? Right there, just click on that black square and it will appear. Because you know, that makes sense…
And that brings me to the point where I pretty much rage quit Microsoft Edge and ended up using real web browsers. If you end up visiting sites that have tons of pop-ups, ads on click and other garbage, be prepared to spend the next minute closing them all because Edge does not support extensions (means no AdBlock Plus) nor does it properly block any pop-ups (yes, there is a setting to do that).
My original goal was to spend one week with Microsoft Edge but I gave up the very next day, it’s pretty much unusable and I have no idea how could Microsoft even release it in such condition.
Hey Microsoft, here is a tip for you: if you want to get rid of the negative IE image and start fresh, don’t do that by releasing unfinished, unpolished and annoying product.
About (Author Profile)
Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Thank you for your efforts man! Your sacrifice will not go unnoticed!
But, if I’m honest, it was a foregone conclusion.
– any browser done from scratch is gonna suck. Chrome sucked, Operome sucked, Firefox sucked. Every single one of them sucked when they first came out, and most of them still do. And will. Forever.
– Microsoft has never done a proper browser. Ever. Not once. Internet Explorer was never, in history, at any one time, the best browser in the market, in any reasonable terms
– pretty much everything Microsoft does is terrible, from a developer standpoint. Office 365 is terrible, and so is Windows Server, Sharepoint, Outlook, their SQL servers, everything is awful and dumb and complicated for no reason whatsoever
– and last but not least: Edge doesn’t have an address bar when you first start it.
That last point says it all, really.
I agree with most of the things you said. Edge is not even for dummies. From interface to web browsing experience – It’s awful! Imo, IE11 was better than Edge.
This is some serious negative feedback! I will keep my distance from MS Edge.
A shame this is being released like this. Was hoping that they’d fix loads of stuff. It would’ve helped with web development for me!
Not my experience at all. Using it for over a week with none of the issues you stste. Have watched video without problems, no annoying ads, just a fast pleasant experience.
Exactly. It is a speed demon. I am totally shocked MS has got this one right.
I agree completely with everything you have in there. Plus, it doesn’t have add block, so the pages usually get stuck charging, or they wont response after a while of stop watching them and a message at the bottom tells you so, offering to “recover the page”. And its even worst trying to use it on old machines. I’ve tried on my Surface 3 and its not that annoying, but using it on my old VAIO notebook its equal to ending with nervous breakdown.
This is probably an in-place upgrade from win7/8 to 10 carrying over an already compromised system, it’s amazing they churn words out in article form to sell clicks and only test on one machine. Honestly used it that messed up for a week..
Or.
Hit piece.
More at 11!
If you read the article, it says I used it on more than one machine:)
“They” meaning those other than this site of course, I have ZDNet PTSD!
I’ve been using Edge for over TWO weeks. Your experience is not my experience at all. I’ve found it to be quick, slick, and clutter free. Use it for banking (Commonwealth Bank), flight bookings (Virgin Australia), and just about every thing else including playing videos on twitter feeds, youtube, and facebook. No issues.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
Like the author of this article, I download and use all of the browsers mentioned. Some do things better than others. Some inexplicably crash or lock up. But it’s nothing I’m going to shoot myself over.
None of the thing he mentioned is remotely close to my experience with the edge.It is super fast.. That i can tell. Faster than good chrome from what i have tested so far. Guys don’t fall for these random reviews and develop a preconceived opinion.Y ou are not going to lose a fortune by testing yourself. Read Anandtech’s review, It has been reported Edge is 112% faster than chrome. I can see why. Another thing.. Audio quality is significantly better in Edge compared to other browser. May be because of their Dolby support.
tried edge for a short time & came to same conclusions … feels like an early beta (or pre-beta/alpha) & totally gave up on it when I found it couldn’t import bookmarks. I see it stores favourites in much the same way as IE, in folders which for me would take an age to import to IE11 then import again to edge as edge can’t import a bookmarks html !! useless
The post and the comments make clear that if you like to customise your browser, block ads, use password managers – if you are hands-on, Edge is not for you. Edge is clearly intended to produce (or reproduce) an iPad-like experience. I expect it’s tied to my desktop now having a “tablet mode”. However, Windows 10 does also ship with IE 11, which is a very nifty browser that does cater to those who want a more traditional browser experience. Personally, Edge is no use to me but it makes sense to set it as the default. The browser-wise can always change the default, while the less hands-on users go with what Edge offers.
I just ditched Edge. Way too slow (hanging often), but the same sites in IE were fine.