Neowin, quoting the Taipei Times, says that Microsoft has pegged March 20th as the release date for Internet Explorer 8. The Internet Explorer 8 sessions are now live on the MIX website which also includes the keynote address by Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer team at Microsoft. As the Taiwanese version is getting released on March 20, we could expect Internet Explorer 8 (English version) being released in MIX09. For now, the version information of IE 8 in the About screen does not reflect. Release Candidate 1 in the recent Windows 7 builds 7048 and 7057.

Update: Looks like Microsoft has published some performance tests that show the new browser in a favorable light compared to Firefox 3 and Google Chrome. The company shows some of the testing in a promotional video. Now if they only had some comparisons with IE6/7 included :\