As announced at the MIX09 conference today, we just shipped the final version of Internet Explorer 8. If you haven’t yet given it a try, here are eight reasons that might persuade you to check it out:

1. You want a web that moves as fast as you do: Highlight an address, click the blue "Accelerator" button (), and see all the things you can do instantly – like mapping, searching, and translating. Check out accelerators from Digg, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and others.
2. You want to know if it's raining outside: Visit live.com, search for “Seattle Weather” (or any major city), hover over the search result, and click the green "Web Slice" button () to add a weather Web Slice to your Favorites Bar. As of this morning there are over 1,200 Web Slices, Accelerators, and add-ons available worldwide in the IE8 add-on gallery.
3. You like everyone to get along:  And that includes wanting the web sites you visit to work well with your browser. IE8 is the only browser to include multiple rendering engines to address backwards compatibility— hit a site that doesn't seem right, hit the Compatibility View button, and you're on your way.
4. You're a visual learner: See pictures of what you’re looking for as you type in the Instant Search box – rich search results in action! Don’t forget to install some extra search providers, such as those from NY Times, Amazon, Wikipedia, OneRiot and ESPN.
5. You want to find it again, fast: To quickly find sites you’ve visited before, simply use the new Smart Address Bar which searches your history, favorites, and feeds.
6. You like your privacy: Enjoy more control over your personal information and privacy on the Web with InPrivate. Keep your work and personal lives separate and protect yourself from unwanted cookies.
7. You want an edge against the bad guys (aka security): Internet Explorer 8 offers unparalleled protection against malware – it's ten times safer than Internet Explorer 7, four times safer than Chrome, nearly three times safer than Safari, and twice as safe as Firefox according to an independent study.
8. You hate interruptions: If one tab crashes, you can re-launch it without affecting your browsing experience – your other tabs keep right on working.

IE8 isn’t just a good browser, it’s much faster than the Internet Explorer of old. Check out this video to see performance tests of real-world sites with leading browsers. Great web performance is about more than the speed of the scripting engine – in the real-world, it’s an end-to-end test of all the browser components.

As far as I’m concerned, the only legitimate excuse for not upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 is if you’re currently already living on the leading edge with Windows 7 Beta. A pre-release version of Internet Explorer 8 is already built into the beta of Windows 7. When we ship the release candidate of Windows 7 later this year, we’ll include the final IE8 release.