Into the wilds of IE7

"Think of some piece of technology that you have recently purchased or a piece of software or feature of an existing piece of technology that youhave recently started using. Think about why you made this decision - what factors caused the"adoption." Now - talk about your experience ... and then think about the theories we've talked about in class. Which theories help explain your behavior?"

So I bit the bullet and downloaded IE7 on one of the five computer stations I regularly use (one in my office, one in the classroom, two desktops at home, and a laptop--if anyone's counting). Was not terribly keen to do so, and I'm sure some of you are wondering why I use IE7 in the first place since Firefox has had a better product for quite some time. The answer is that most students use Internet Explorer and when I'm demo-ing in front of a full class of 30, confusion will reign for less technologically-adept students if their screen looks different than mine. Thinking about multiple user interfaces is tiring (trust me, I used to switch teaching software packages AND platforms every three hours, and I thought my brain would explode when I couldn't remember the shortcut that worked 20 minutes before in another class!).

However I've been annoyed with the IE6 interface for a long time, so I read two or three industry reviews on IE7, which convinced me that it would be a big improvement and a relatively painless conversion. Nonetheless, I decided to use only one station as a guinea pig.

Surprise! It was painless! Gone are all the stupid pull down menus (tho advanced internet options are still squirreled away where Microsoft figures most people won't find them). The interface is clean and minimalist, which translates to valuable screen real estate freed up.

How about applying Everett Rogers' characteristics of innovations theory to my little upgrade experiment?
1) relative advantage: "better than the idea it supersedes." It wasn't hard to improve on IE6.
2) compatibility: "consistent with existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters." Since I was already comfortable with websurfing, this was not taking a big risk.
3) complexity: "degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use." I was pretty confident from the industry reviews I read that this wouldn't be an issue.
4) trialability: "degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis." Since I could try the new software on a single computer, and didn't need to uninstall IE6, my experiment had a high degree of trialability.
5) observability: "degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others." Again, since the reviews were by technogeeks whom I trusted, and screenshots of the new interface were provided, I was willing to sample the new product. Next, over the upcoming break I plan to upgrade the classroom computers, which will in turn expose 100+ students to the new environment. I would definitely avoid upgrading the classroom computers if I weren't confident that students will quickly and easily adapt.