Microsoft plans to distribute IE 7 using its Automatic Updates mechanism. That's not a bad idea. It's convenient for everyone.
However, this new browser version will be tagged by Microsoft as a "high priority" update, which means that everyone using Automatic Updates will receive a notification, no matter what Automatic Update settings they've applied.
How is a new web browser a "high priority update?" IE6 will be a supported application until 2009 -- giving users more than
two years to switch to IE7. With Microsoft's past performance, two years seems to be a reasonable amount of time for them to fix the major bugs in a new release.
Users will be given a choice to install IE7, but they will be harassed no matter what their Automatic Update settings are configured as.
If you run an IT shop, this means that a lot of your users may be upgrading to IE7 before you are read to support them on the new browser. To help make this decision less of a disaster for Microsoft's enterprise customers, Microsoft is making a
Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 7 available.
Microsoft makes the problem and Microsoft makes the solution. But wouldn't it be easier if they just didn't make the problem in the first place?
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