Beilinson said Internet Explorer's
performance was a high priority
from the start, and several
changes were made to meet that
goal. For instance, use of a
component architecture loads only
the features you need into
memory; and support for HTTP
1.1, dynamic HTML and
Microsoft's ''virtual machine'' for
Java all promise a boost in
performance.
''Personally, I prefer Internet
Explorer because of the
performance,'' said Richard Soh,
senior systems engineer with a
major New York investment
company. Yet, the investment
company standardized earlier on
Netscape, and Soh does not
expect to change for some time.
Netscape may have trouble
overcoming the speed deficit.
''When you take something and
embed it in the operating system,
it's going to run faster,'' said Rob
Enderle, senior analyst at Giga
Information Group in Santa Clara,
Calif. ''Unless Netscape does its
own tuning, which is unlikely, then
its browser will be slower than
Internet Ex-plorer.''
Not only does this issue directly
affect Netscape's browser share,
but it also impacts other revenue
centers, such as the Netcenter
Web site and its
enterprise-software product line.
(Netscape was contacted for this
story but declined to comment.)
''I think that [continuing to lose
browser market share] is
something that Netscape should
be losing sleep over,'' said Jeetu
Patel, vice president of research
at Doculabs, a research company
in Chicago. ''It needs to keep
browser share to sell servers. If
market share goes down
significantly, it'll affect the
revenue in my view.'' |
