I've been asking Gmail to display images in my mail for a long time, and while Firefox and Chrome play nice, IE8 has consistently refused to display them.

Having the same issue?

First, make sure that for each email with images you want to see, you click on "Always show images from this sender" below the header information in the email. If that's not working (which was the utterly frustrating problem in my case), try this:  

In IE:

• Go to Tools > Internet Options
• Go to the "Security" tab
• Click on the Internet icon
• Click "Custom Level"
• Scroll down and near the bottom, under "Miscellaneous" look for "Display Mixed Content"
• Click "Enable"

(Hat tip to the GetSatisfaction forums for Google, where commenter Superyalda explained how to do it.)