What it is
As of November 1st Microsoft has released IE 7 to it's clients using Windows Update as a high priority release. Anyone running Windows update may well see this as an option in their high priority list, and anyone with automatic updates turned on will be prompted to install the new version. Note that this is NOT occurring as part of the Tuesday update cycle - they've released to production as of today.
What you should do
If you feel confident that IE7 won't interfere with your system - go ahead and accept the update. If you are in a corporate environment and want to protect your users from installing IE7 you'll need to get the IE7 blocking patch. We recommend this only if you know you will have problems with IE7 or if you've not yet tested IE7 and have IE based applications you rely on.
There are some great things in IE7 and you shouldn't necessarily avoid installing it just because it's new. But you should be sure you do so consciously (IE make the choice - don't let MS make it for you).
Further references
|