San Francisco - Despite some initial glowing reviews, Microsoft has been flooded with complaints about its new Internet Explorer 8 and has seen early users downgrade to the previous version, Information Week reported Monday.

The software giant is hoping that its new browser will help stem a steady flight of surfers to rival products, most notably the open- source Firefox browser.

According to the latest figures, Firefox now controls 22 per cent of the browser market compared to 67 per cent for Internet Explorer, which once enjoyed more than 90 per cent of the market.

The report said that most complaints regarded printing from websites, search malfunctions, image problems, boot times and the fact that the new browser takes up 4 gigabytes of disk space.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 on Thursday, touting its greater speed, security and ease of use. Millions of users installed the free download and by Sunday some 2.59 per cent of web surfers were using the software.

By Monday the figure had dropped to 1.86 per cent as "early adopters of IE8 are switching back to the more familiar, and -at this point - reliable Explorer 7 browser," the report said.