Just read this post (admittedly, a little behind the times, but I have been very busy). It seems that in Europe, MS are being forced to remove IE from Windows 7 when it launches, and to comemerate this, all European versions of Windows 7 will have an ‘e’ appended to the product name (so for instance Windows 7 Home Premium ‘E’).
I cannot believe that with all the ‘smarts’ that work at MS this is the best idea they could come up with. The cost of x2 completely sets of packaging for US and EU materials !! And, seeing as what I suspect what will end up happening is a link on the desktop entitled ‘click here to install a web browser’ that will simply…..no wait for it…..download and install IE from the MS site, I have to ask ‘what’s the point ?’
Without this link for dummies, they would also appear to have created and chicken and egg type scenario (at least for the lowest demonination of user). If you have no browser on your PC, how do you download a browser ? Yes, I know the smarter among us can just ftp/sftp one down from our favourite downloads site, but I dont fancy trying to talk my parents through that particular operation on a week day evening :o(
Why not simply force MS to incude a bunch of the top browsers. That way people (even dumb ones) could just sample and then remove (or ignore if they have the disk space) the ones they don’t like ?
It also looks like there will be no upgrade option for Europe either. So clean installs all round with the gnashing of teeth as people realise they didn’t get everything off that they needed before wiping the system.
What I still find more outrageous is that MS are still inflicting their version of paint on people and the EU have not said a word…….!!
