10 Best & Useful Windows Phone 7 Tips & Tricks

Many of us are shifting from Java and Symbian operating systems to either Android or to Microsoft’s Windows platform devices. So, if you have recently bought a new Windows 7 phone then let’s check out the ten top most tips and tricks which will help you in getting accustomed to it faster.

Ten tips and tricks for Windows Phone 7:

How to Add apps to the Start screen?

In the world of long application list its evident that you may be having certain important applications which you use more often and which can be pulled on to the start screen itself so that instantly you can open the application. So when you press on the application icon a contextual menu will be popping up in which just select Pin to Start option and this is it that app will be shown in the Start screen.

How to Remove apps from the Start screen?

Now, if you have added any app in the start screen and if you wish to remove that app from the start screen then all you need to do is to just hold your finger on the tile till it highlights and then press the No Pin icon in the top right-hand corner.

How to change the theme?

Next up is changing the visual appearance of the device means if you wish to change the theme then just head over to the Menu list, select Settings option, and then select Theme. Now, from here you can choose the background colour of your choice and also you can choose the accent colour. Background options are “Black” or “White” while you get nine accent colours to pick from.

How to Turn off data Roaming?

Since Windows Phone 7 is more of a internet friendly phone data is must for your device and if you plan to go in roaming then definitely you would want to get away with the roaming data charges, so for that you will need to turn off the data roaming. Just head to Settings, Mobile Networks and there you go, you can turn off the data roaming.

How to Turn off 3G connectivity?

Since 3G eats up the battery like anything sometimes you would want to get back to 2G Network, so for this you need to turn off the 3G connectivity. Just go to Settings, Mobile networks and you will find an option to turn off the 3G connectivity.

How to Turn on Wi-Fi?

So, now when you have turn off the 3G, the best way to surf internet instantly and faster is with the help of Wi Fi. It even saves the battery if compared with 3G network. Just go to the Settings option from your device and that’s it you can find the Wi Fi option over there.

How to Set the screen time-out?



Your phone may get locked automatically so that accidentally you don’t end up calling your friends from your pocket by mistake. Just head to Settings, Lock & Wallpaper, and choose how long you want your Windows Phone 7 handset to go before locking down. You can choose from the time ranging from 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, or even you can choose to screen time out to never.



How to Setup an email account?

Your device will only be called a smart device when you converge more things into your device. One of those convergence is setting an email account on your Windows Phone 7, there’s a support for Windows Live, Outlook and also for Yahoo Mail and also other accounts. Just feed in some information like Login ID, password etc and you will be able to set up an email account within minutes.

How to Enable Google apps email?

What if you could not use an Android device, you can always power your device with the Google flavor in your device. Just Log in to your Google Apps dashboard, go to Service settings, choose Mobile and just Enable Google Sync option and you are done with powering your phone with Google.

How to Turn off Geo tagging?

By default the Geo tagging facility comes activated out of the box and sometimes when you are taking any image then it sometimes create nuisance, so to turn off, just go to Settings, Applications, Pictures and camera and just toggle the include location (GPS Information) in pictures you click to the Off position.

Free cell phone tracking software -Cell phone locator-GPS tracker

Cell phone tracking softwares are now widely for funny or track lost/stole mobile phones either via GPS or GSM, especially giving iPhone and Android cell phones are so popular around the world, the demand for cell phone locator softwares reached a record high. In order to help our readers to choose the best cell phone trackers, we compared the cell phone GPS tracking softwares available and recommend the five best to smartphone users.

MobiWee

MobiWee currently supports Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry cell phones. Users can remotely Locate and track their device, retrieve their information, then lock, wipe, encrypt, delete certificates (for the corporate user), and shutdown their device from any web browser- even if the SIM card has been removed.
Find more about MobiWee

Find My iPhone

Once you enabled Find My iPhone on your iPhone, you can:
1. Locate your iPhone on a map.
2. Set a passcode lock remotely.
3. Display a message or play a sound on your lost iPhone.
4. Protect your privacy with Remote Wipe.
Find more about Find My iPhone

InstaMapper

InstaMapper is a free service that allows you to track a GPS-enabled cell phone online in real time.
1. Lots of storage.
2. Access to raw data.
3. Location sharing.
Find more about InstaMapper

Buddyway

Buddy is a free GPS track maker for mobile devices that allows you to track any mobile phone or PDA with built-in GPS (or with Bluetooth GPS receiver) in real time.
1. Track any GPS-enabled phone in real-time online.
2. Save trips for later reference.
3. Share the trips with desired people or keep them private.
4. Capture and comment on particular locations of your trip (in real-time) directly from your phone.
5. Import and save trips to Google Earth to visualize them in 3D-mode and more.
6. View route statistics and charts: route length, route duration, avg. & max. speed, altitude changes, etc.
7. Setup alerts on desired regions and get alerted when nearby.
8. See the list of supported devices on the website.
Find more about Buddyway

Mobile tracking system

Mobile Tracking System 1.51 is a free mobile phone tracker, it allows you tracing a mobile phone location via Gps.
1. Tracking a mobile phone location from a GSM mobile phone or GPS receiver.
2. Tracing your current location from a GSM cell phone or GPS receiver.
3. Add or edit a cellid directly from the mobile client.
4. Realtime any user tracking (if allowed by user).
5. Send and receive e-mail messages directly to and from the MTS client.
6. Send and receive MTS chat messages.
7. Send and receive files.
Find more about Mobile tracking system

9 easy tricks about Android 2.2

Since the release of Android 2.1, Google has been working on Version 2.2 and have made lots of improvement to challenge iPhone OS. Here are 10 tips to help you with your Androi 2.2 cell phone.

1. Excellent search functionality

Android 2.2 not only support voice search, but you also can search weather bus, contacts, webs, apps, calendar, drop boxes and footprints. In the meantime, you can switch on/off search history and suggestion.

2. Use search widgets on the screen

If you search a lot, and have enough space on your main screen, you can add a few search widgets, search for web, apps and contact respectively.

3. User-friendly keyboard

Android 2.2 has much improvements in typing. When typing with earlier version, you need to enter a new screen to input numbers and etc, but now you can see number 1 with the letter Q, and @ share the same key with letter S. This way you only have to press the S key longer than usual to input @ when type an Email address.

4. Hang up a phone call with power button

You can hang up a call by hitting the power button with Android 2.2 if you enable it in settings, but not all Android cell phone has this feature.

5. Enable Flash in Android 2.2

Android 2.2 cell phone has built in Adobe Flash 10.1 player, if your cell phone is Nexus One, you need to download it from Android Market before installing.

6. Turn off Flash

Although Flash provide you with more games and funny, but it slows you down while browse the internet, you can disable it in Android browser->settings->add on.

7. Use a PIN to protect your privacy.

Android 2.2 allows you to lock/unlock your cell phone with PIN.

8. Upgrade all your apps with a simple button

Well this is for those lazy people, you can upgrade all your apps by hitting only one button, or if you do not have time, this may turn out usefull to you.

9. Move stuff to your SD card.

We wrote this also before, please go to my previous post.

Priority Inbox in Gmail for mobile

If you’ve ever cursed a phone’s tiny screen as utterly inadequate for sifting through an overflowing inbox you’ll be pleased to hear that the Gmail mobile web app now supports Priority Inbox. Priority Inbox helps combat information overload by automatically identifying your important messages so you can focus on those first. Until today it was only available on the desktop and on Android devices.

Now, once you set up Priority Inbox in the desktop version of Gmail, you’ll see Priority Inbox sections when you visit gmail.com from your phone’s browser and click on the ‘Menu’ screen. You’ll also see importance markers in your inbox, so you can quickly identify which messages are important.



This feature is available for most mobile browsers that support HTML5, such as devices running Android 1.5+ and iOS 3+. Currently, you can’t set up Priority Inbox or mark messages as important or unimportant from here. If you have suggestions or want to learn more, visit our Help Center and forum.

Android: 5 ways to get rid of lack of memory issue

Many Android cell phone users always run into the issue of lack of memory, or the phone is less responsive, especially when you installed too many applications. There are a lot of ways to save space, but some of them are most effective, if you have the same problem, you can try below methods.
1. Clear caches generated by apps
Since every cell phone has limited ROM space and Android V2.2 earlier versions won’t let you install applications in SD card, we have to clear the cache generated by apps to free the memory. Go to Settings->Applications->Manage applications, you can find that some apps have caches, just press Clear Cache, that would save you a few MB memory for you, sometimes even over 10 MBs.
2. Cleanup /data/dalvik-cache
If you run out of memory, try first to remove everything in /data/dalvik-cache then reboot immediately. The necessary .dex files will be recreated automatically. I had about 15 MB of old unnecessary .dex files.
3. Delete old applications
If you have already upgraded Google Maps from the Market, you can delete /system/app/Maps.apk and /data/dalvik-cache/system@app@Maps.apk@classes.dex since the new version uses different file names. You must remount /system rw as shown below to be able to delete stuff from /system/app. Be very careful when modifying /system, you can break your phone. Don’t forget to remount it afterwards.
4. Use cache cleaning apps.
There a many cache cleaning apps on Android market, like Quick
App Clean Cache, but you need to pay for it. If you get root, you can also try CacheCleaner, CacheMate, and MoveCache to clear caches easily.
5. Move apps to SD card
This requires a lot of Linux expertise because you may mess it up, but this will surely save a lot of memory for you. But keep in mind Widgets and system apps won’t work when you move them to SD card, so you need to make sure apps are supporting apps to SD. You can also use Apps 2 SD or SDMove to help you when doing so.
Above 5 ways are the best to help you save memory and make your cell phone more responsive. Besides, you can uninstall apps you never or seldom use, or reboot your cell phone when it runs slowly, this helps as well.

Free OCR Softwares To Convert Images Into Text

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a method that allows you to convert scanned documents into editable text form.If you have to copy some book or other piece of work from a paper into your computer then most probably you will type the whole text in wordpad,but using OCR softwares all you need to do is to take the photograph of the document.Isn’t it time saving?

Ofcourse the accuracy of the convert text is not 100% but most of the time it is close to 100%.The Image formats that are supported by most of the OCR softwares are JPEG,PNG,PDF,BMP,GIFF and TIFF.
In this post I will Give you the names and download links of of 5 Free  OCR softwares
The Best Five Free Offline OCR  Softwares Are:-
1. FreeOCR :-It is windows platform based software and is compatible with the following versions of windows:-
Windows 2000
Windows 2003
Windows XP 32 bit
Windows Vista (all editions)
Windiws 7 (all)

The software uses Tesseract OCR PDF engine which is realeased by google and is open source.It supports all popular image formats and can convert your documents into .txt or .doc files
Download FreeOCR V.3.0
Visit FreeOCR Website
2. Tesseract:- Tesseract is an open source engine which was developed by HP Labs and is now with google.Currently Tesseract V 3.0 is available for download
Download Tesseract V 3.0
Visit  Tesseract Website
3. GOCR:- It is a OCR software for linux user’s using red hat aor fedora.The Software is comapatible with All POSIX (Linux/BSD/UNIX-like OSes), Linux, OS Portable (Source code to work with many OS platforms)
Download GOCR
4.OCR Desktop:- OCR Desktop Application is a desktop is a windows compatible software for converting your text into images with high accuracy.Ocr Desktop uses latest technologies to make sure you get the best possible results
Download OCR Desktop

5.Simple OCR:-Simple Ocr is another popular freeware software that is being used by thousand of user’s worldwide.
Download Simple OCR

Recover Deleted Data Using FreeUndelete Software

Many times it happens that we accidently delete some important data from our computer.In such cases data recovery softwares are very helpful but most of them are paid softwares.There are only few Free data recovery softwares available on the the internet and one of them is freeundelete.The other one is Recuva on which I have already written a post.
Before you use FreeUndelete or Recuva software I advise you not to transfer any data to that particular drive from which you have to recover data as it can reduce your chances of data recovery.
Now In post I will give you download link for the Freeundelete software and also highlight some of its main features.
Filesystems that are supported by freeundelete Software are:

• NTFS 1.0 and 2.0 (Filesystems of windows NT,Xp,Vista,2000 and Windows 7)
• FAT 12,FAT 16,FAT 32 (Windows 98)

Where are the recovered files stored?
The recovered files will be stored at the user specified destination


Click Here To Download freeundelete Data recovery Software

How To Use Mobile Number Portability (MNP) In India

Mobile Number Portability has already been launched all over India.Now the customers have more freedom and operators have more competition.For those who are unaware about MNP let me give them a brief introduction.
Mobile Number portability allows the customers to change their operator without changing there mobile number.This feature was first rolled in haryana and now it has been rolled all over India.
In this post I will try to answer all the queries of users about Mobile Number Portability.The issues that I am addressing in this post are:-

• How To Change Mobile Operator?
• How Long will it take to Switch to new Service Provider?
• What are the charges of MNP?
• Is MNP also available for Postpaid customers?
• Can I migrate from Postpaid to prepaid using MNP?
• Can I migrate from CDMA to GSM using MNP?
• How Frequently  I can change my operator?

How To Change Mobile Operator?
To porting your mobile number to another operator you need a Unique Porting Code (UPC).So here is the complete steps of switching your operator

1. Send a sms to 1900 in the following format

PORT <your Mobile number>
Eg:- PORT 94XXXXXXXX

1. Now you will receive your UPC from 1901.It will be a 8 digit alphanumeric code along with the expiry date.It automatically gets expired after 24 hours.
2. Now visit the new operator shop and fill a mobile number portability form there.

You will need to fill the following information
Your Mobile number
Your current operator
The UPC code that You received

1. You have to submit your Address and ID proof’s.Your photograph and post paid bill (if you have a postpaid connection)
2. Now purchase the new sim card from the new operator.
3. Follow their instructions
4. The maximum charge for this service is Rs 19

How Long will it take to Switch to new Service Provider?
It can switch between 24 hours to 4 days.Don’t worry your old connection will work until you are ported to new number.
The maximum time during which your number will not function is 2 hours and during night (12 pm-5 am).So it won’t affect you much.
What are the charges of MNP?
The maximum amount that can be charged is Rs 19.
Is MNP also available for Postpaid customers?
Yes, MNP is also available for postpaid customers.But you have to clear all your pending bills to use MNP.
Can I migrate from Postpaid to prepaid using MNP?
Yes,you can migrate from postpaid to prepaid connections using mobile number portability.
Can I migrate from CDMA to GSM using MNP?
You can Migrate from CDMA to GSM connection.But it will make your CDMA phone useless so choose wisely.
How Frequently  I can change my operators?
For using Mobile Number Portability (MNP) your connection needs to be atleast 3 months old.So after 3 moths you can change your operator.

Mozilla Makes Plans for Firefox 5

Firefox 4 was originally scheduled for release in November of last year, but bugs and last minute features have seen the next version of Firefox delayed several months. However, Firefox 4 has finally entered the home stretch and should be available in release candidate form on February 25, with the final release a few weeks after that. Never one to rest, Mozilla has already set its sights on Firefox 5. The company is hoping to avoid the delays that plagued Firefox 4 by moving future releases to a rolling update schedule, which resembles Google’s approach for its Chrome web browser.
Mozilla’s goal is to deliver a total of four major releases in 2011, pushing Firefox to version 7 by the end of the year. Mozilla is hoping that faster development times will mean new features can be rolled out as they are completed. Among the priorities for Firefox 5 are 64 bit support on Windows, a revamped Account Manager and the usual performance and speed improvements.
Whether or not Mozilla can meet its rather ambitious goals for the future of Firefox remains to be seen, but work has already begun on Firefox 5.
The first mockups on Mozilla’s AreWePrettyYet design showcase show off what Mozilla calls “a site-specific browser.” Widely used websites, like Twitter and Facebook, would get drop-down menus within dedicated tabs. As shown in the mockup above, the tab would add a site’s top level menu links in a drop-down menu.
Other mockup ideas include changing the search bar to use colors instead of favicons, blocking automatically installed add-ons and promoting Firefox Sync on the default about:blank page.
Naturally these mockups and possible features are very much a work in progress and there’s no guarantee that Firefox 5 will actually incorporate these ideas. There are also, thus far, no firm release dates to go along with Firefox 5’s roadmap.

TechSparks 2011-India’s biggest technology startup hunt

Innovation is the key of every startup. Innovating the innovations and arranging platforms for young innovators to become great entrepreneurs are as great as  innovations. Such a big platform was created in 2010 by Yourstory.in to highlight  the great technological product startups. (Yourstory-A leading online platform facilitates networking opportunities and more visibility for budding entrepreneurs ). That event was a big success and was featured as “India’s biggest product technology startup showcase” by various print and visual media.  Now the same story repeats – This time Yourstory joins hands with Sequoia Capital and framed  TechSparks  2011 in a bigger canvas.

Shradha Sharma, the founder of Yourstory says about TechSparks

“ It’s not that India does not have product tech startups emerging. It’s just that they aren’t as visible. They have trouble getting out of the proverbial garage and getting into the market. That’s what TechSparks is all about – getting product tech startups access to meaningful opportunities”

TechSparks 2011 will be a multi city series of events to feature India’s most innovative technology startups. The Regional Round Tables  will be conducted in Delhi, Cochin,Chennai and Pune. The top 20 tech startups among the received entries will be featured in the Grand Finale scheduled for August 2011 in Bangalore.

The focused areas will be Software products, Mobile/VAS products, Cloud Computing and Web 2

TechSparks 2011- Event Timeline:

• Registration and submission of entries: 15 April  11 to 30 Jun 11(ongoing)
• Evaluation & First Shortlist: 30 June to 12 July 2011
• Grand Finale on 12 August 2011

Registration is already open Click here to Register . You can register To be a TechSpark or To attend the events.

Three apps for easy blogging on the Mac

After writing a post recently, about a Dior watch for men, it suddenly occurred to me how it had taken less than fifteen minutes to write the post, embed the picture, check for errors and then post it on the blog.

This is a far cry from the 30 to 60 minutes it used to take me to update from our WordPress blogging back-end. Let’s just say that, for all its virtues, using the WordPress backend several times a day can be a pretty harrowing experience. And on the rare occasion when one is expected to live-blog an event–WEF, Budget, Election, Anna Hazare–I am quickly driven to substance abuse to help me cope.

Not any more. I now do most of my personal and professional blogging from a Mac computer and usually have to use no more than three apps to get things done. One of which largely runs in the background. This is a quick run-through of the apps and why I love them so much…

1. MarsEdit

This is an excellent desktop blogging application that helps you compose and publish posts directly onto several blogging platforms: WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, TypePad and so on. Once MarsEdit is set up on a computer, writing and publishing posts is almost as easy as writing and saving on any popular word processor such as MS Word.

Somehow I find the idea of just opening an app and directly composing a blogpost most appealing. MarsEdit’s interface is free of clutter, fuss and mundane pop-up windows. And while there are a handful of settings you could tweak with if you want to get technical, it works well straight out of the box too. The only bit that can get a little confusing for new users is embedding multimedia, such as Youtube videos. For this you need to switch between two editing modes–Rich Text and HTML. (Which is what you would do on the WordPress backend as well.) But once you get the hang of how to do that, the app is pretty powerful.

My complaints with MarsEdit, for now, include things like being unable to caption pictures, and not having a preview window that works like Windows Live Writer. (Which automatically picks up your designs from your blog for more accurate previewing.)

MarsEdit is a $39.99 app for a single-user, multiple-computer license. And it comes with a 30-day free full-featured preview. If you blog frequently and on multiple blogs–and can’t stand the site of code–the investment is well worth it.

2. Dropic

While I do embed the odd YouTube video or PDF file in my posts, most of my embeds are usually pictures. The most sophisticated thing I do with pictures is resize them. (And occasionally crop them.) I’ve been using Dropic lately to take the pain completely out of resizing images. Just drag and drop an image onto the Dropic window and KABOOM, you have a resized image.

Dropic comes with four sizes pre-built into the system. (There is a way to change these presets. But I haven’t figured out how to do that. Or found a reason to.) I just convert everything into medium size. That usually works with all my blogs.

If you want slightly more sophisticated image editing on your computer and would rather not use the heavy-ish applications that are pre-loaded on your Mac try SeaShore. I am usually easily befuddled by image editing apps. But SeaShore intimidates me less than most.

3. DropBox

And finally there is DropBox, the swiss army knife of the internet-enabled. I’ve written about DropBox in glorious terms before, so I won’t go ovser its awesomeness again. But what I love about DropBox when it comes to blogging is the ability to make publicly accessible image files on the fly. Drop an image onto the Dropic window, save the output inside DropBox folder and in moments you have a web-ready image file you can embed in your post.

Now in most cases MarsEdit lets you upload images along with your post to the web. But often the Livemint blogs gets all temperamental and refuses to play ball. What I do then is to use proceed as usual while composing the post and then, just before uploading, I switch to HTML mode, and replace all the image links with DropBox public URLs. This way no files are uploaded, your WordPress install acts with dignity, but your photos are served by the DropBox servers and appear normally. (If you find this too complicated, just ask your IT guy to tweak your WordPress install.)

But this is just one of the many cool things you can do with DropBox.

What tricks and tips do you have for the semi-professional or professional blogger? Leave comments please. We could all use all the help we can get.

Internet Explorer 9 Arrives With More Speed, Better Web Standards Support

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9, the first major update for Microsoft’s browser in nearly two years. Internet Explorer 9 is a huge leap forward for the IE line, bringing much-needed web standards support, better performance and hardware acceleration for faster graphics and animations on supported PCs.
To upgrade Internet Explorer, download IE9 from Microsoft. Only Windows 7 and Vista are supported, as IE9 will not work with Windows XP — not surprising, but a bummer for those on XP notebooks, where IE9’s speed improvements would be great news.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference for longtime Internet Explorer users will be IE9’s totally revamped, minimalist user interface. The numerous menus, icons and tools at the top of the browser in IE8 have been cleaned up and replaced with a single combined URL-and-search bar and new main menu icon that leads to all the old menu options. The interface is clearly taking its influence from, and even looks nearly identical to, Google’s Chrome web browser.
As you would expect, IE9 is tightly integrated with Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system and offers new features like the ability to pin websites to the task bar. To use the pinned sites feature just grab a site’s icon from the IE9 address bar and drag it to your task bar. In fact, the pinned sites feature isn’t limited to the task bar, so if you’re still using Vista, fear not, you can pin sites to your start menu.

Webmonkey pinned in IE9

The pinned sites feature offers websites a chance to integrate additional features into the task bar. For example, developers can add a meta tag and some other information to customize jump lists, add links to common pages on a site or send updates and notifications directly to the task bar.
The new hardware acceleration means IE9 moves at near light speed compared to its predecessor. IE9 also holds its own with and even bests Chrome 10 and Firefox 4 (which both feature hardware acceleration as well) in some tests. That means complex animations and native web video are plenty fast in the latest version of IE. IE9 also includes a revamped JavaScript engine that makes JavaScript-heavy websites like Gmail or Facebook considerably speedier.
To help ease users’ growing privacy concerns on today’s web, the new IE9 adds some privacy controls similar to those Mozilla and Google have been adding to their browsers. In IE9 you’ll find a new preferences option to enable Tracking Protection Lists, which can block cookies, beacons, pixels and other tricks that advertisers use to track your movements around the web.
Perhaps the best news in Internet Explorer 9 is the new web standards support. Despite some outlandish claims from Microsoft, IE9 is not perfect and it still lags behind its peers when it comes to supporting the latest and greatest features on the web, but it’s certainly a huge improvement over IE8.
Microsoft has opted for a conservative approach to new web technologies in IE9. While the nearly complete Firefox 4 and the recently released Chrome 10 support more of the HTML5, CSS 3 and web API stack, IE9 is a huge step forward for Microsoft. IE9 offers support for the most widely used elements of HTML5 — like the new audio, video, canvas and semantic tags. Still, Microsoft has decided to pass on many of the new APIs. Cutting edge web tools like the offline web applications API, the File API, Web Workers API and the Web Notifications API won’t work in IE9. That’s bad news for web developers, but it’s also bad news for IE users since the web shows no signs of slowing down to accommodate IE.
In Microsoft’s defense, many of these APIs are still in the last call stage and won’t be finalized until 2014. But, in opting to take the more conservative approach to emerging web standards, Microsoft is risking IE9 being out of date even as it launches. Hopefully Microsoft will include support for the emerging APIs in future updates.
To get an idea of how IE9 stacks up against the competition, I ran IE9 through the HTML5Test suite. The HTML5Test suite ranks browsers based not only on W3C-approved components of HTML5, but also some experimental stuff, and some components that aren’t in the spec at all but are widely considered important tools for building more powerful HTML5 web applications, like geolocation. IE9 scores 130 out of a possible 400, which is a huge improvement over IE8’s meager 32. For comparison, Google Chrome 10 scores 283 and Firefox 4 RC1 gets 255.
Despite some shortcomings in the web standards department, IE9 is a competent browser and well worth the upgrade from IE8. If you’re interested in taking advantage of the latest tricks on the web, clearly IE9 is not the browser for you. Still, for those that have no choice in their browser — for example, on a work machine, in a corporate environment — IE9 is obviously good news. For the web at large IE9 represents a step, if not a giant leap, forward.