IE7 Released As High-Priority Update

jimbojw writes, "Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update or download from Microsoft." And an anonymous reader notes stats on IE7 and FF2 downloads, adding: "Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers. Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?" The sans.org stats site will be updated throughout the day, so perhaps we'll get an indication.

Had this on my home comp

[mapkinase]

Installed smoothly, reassigned without giving a choice file types to IE, e.g. xml's

Re:WGA

[Apocalypse111]

Look up a little utility called muBlinder. It doesn't work right now, as MS updated their WGA software just a few days ago, but give it a couple days and you can pretty much download whatever you want/need.

Re:Hello chaos

[Mr.Sharpy]

For corporate environments (using Active Directory), Microsoft released a set of tools and information you can use to block the installation of IE7 from Windows Update. This information was made widely available to administrators of Microsoft networks. If you were (too late now) anticipating problems with the update, your domain administrator(s) should have use the IE7 blocker toolkit.

More blocker toolkit info here [microsoft.com]

Re:Market share

[ivan256]

Now more than ever the browser is an application platform. Microsoft has had the vast majority of the market share in that department leading to a practically guaranteed torrent of revenue. If non-microsoft browsers gain enough market share, application developers will tend towards adding support for the new platform. That would force Microsoft to spend more money on development in order to stay competitive (no more 5 year release schedule). That would lead to a significant drop in Microsoft's profit margins.

Much FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's optional. "High priority" doesn't mean "forced". The user will see an installer appear and they can choose to install or not install IE 7.
 
  There are also several other options from preventing the installer from even appearing. It's not much different from getting automatic upgrade notifications from Firefox or many other applications.

The details can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/updatemanagement/ windowsupdate/ie7announcement.mspx [microsoft.com]

I have to now wonder if we'll see a few dozen retractions in this thread as people realize they jumped to the wrong conclusions.

Re:Firefox fans, get a clue!

[jsight]

Mozilla has not yet pushed 2.0 out via auto-update, and even when they do, it will ask permission.

Re:Web Search

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, when you install IE, if your default search is not set to MSN it asks you if you want to change it or not. You select no and it uses whatever your default was from before.