IE8: window.open is very slow when specifying window features

I have noticed that when I try to use window.open in IE8, along with some features, the wi开发者_C百科ndow takes a really long time to load. For example, the following code:

var startTime = new Date().getTime();  
var features = "width=500,height=400";  
window.open("", "", features);  
var endTime = new Date().getTime();  
alert(endTime - startTime);

alerts values that vary between 1300 to 2000. If I don't pass the features parameter, it drops to around 300-400, which is acceptable, but I do need to pass the new window size (and probably some other settings). In Chrome, for comparison, the values range is 5-7.

I realize that IE is significantly slower, but is it really that bad? Over a second and a half for opening a new (empty) window seems insane. Is there anything that can be done, or is that just the way it is?