Yes IE8 is really that shitty.
IE8 is the largest single handed piece of anything that holds back progress on the Internet for developers... Just ask any dev or (X)HTML/CSS guy about IE6...
Then take a look at this:
http://a.deveria.com/caniuse/
Scroll to the bottom and you'll see IE8 comes in at a whopping 28% by FAR the lowest score...
Internet Explorer sucks... period.
Use Chrome, it's the fastest browser with the fastest JS parsing times. JS Animations look the smoothest hands down...